Google is Working on Speech-to-Speech Translation for Android

In Douglas Adams’ humorous sci-fi novel series Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a special kind of fish is mentioned – the Babel Fish. When inserted into the ear, it translates any spoken language to whichever language the listener understands. It is a very nifty device, and now Google seeks to create something similar.

According to Times Online, Google is developing a speech-to-speech automated translator for Android phones. It’s essentially a combination of two of Google’s existing technologies; its online universal translator service, Google Translate, and its voice recognition system.

Google plans to make its Babel Fish a lot like a human translator; the software would analyze chunks of speech, and translate them in their entirety, rather than translating word for word. Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services, claims the technology could go live in a couple of years. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on. If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently,” he says.

Anyone who’s used Google Translate knows that translations aren’t (and probably never will be) perfect, but they’re very helpful when you can’t understand a word of some foreign language. However, Google’s voice recognition also has issues of its own, and I fear that these two combined would produce a very high amount of errors. The Times also mentions the issue of different accents, a problem that Google plans to solve by making the software gradually learn the speaking habits of the phone’s owner.

Despite the big issues Google has to overcome to make this technology useful, if anyone can pull it off, Google can. The idea of being able to call someone who doesn’t speak your language, and have the conversation translated almost instantly, well, that’s one of those inventions that made Google the company it is today.

Tags: Google, machine translation, translation

German Pranksters Attach GPS Device to Google Street View Car [MAP]

This one will definitely put a smile on the faces of all those who think Google’s Street View service is invading their privacy: members of German Free Art & Technology group (F.A.T.) have noticed Google’s Street View car in Berlin and decided to attach a GPS device onto it and track its movement.

The result of their efforts can be seen on a large map, and although it doesn’t seem to show anything out of the ordinary – the Google Street View car seemed to be driving around Berlin as it should be, until they realized they’re tracked and removed the GPS device – but it was nice to be able to reverse the roles and snoop on Google, even for a short while.

Tags: Google, gps, street view

Don’t Have Money for a Real iPad? Cut One Out of Paper

Yeah, we know. Although experts have been congratulating Apple on how competitive the iPad prices are, when you actually have to part with 500 bucks or more (if you want 3G which is a must-have for such a device), it hurts.

There is a solution that won’t cost you a dime, though. It also won’t get you an iPad, but you can perhaps fool someone with poor eyesight you have one, at least for a second. Yes, we’re talking about a paper iPad.

To make one yourself, you’ll need these two PNG files: the front and the back. Print them, cut them out, and voila – your brand new paper iPad is ready to…well, it can’t really do anything except sit on your desk, but considering the price is zero, we won’t hold it against it.

Tags: diy, Fun, ipad, paper