February 12th, 2010 by Geoff
The Times Online has recently reported that Google is developing software that will enable instant translation to users via their phones.
Google is building on its existing Google Translate and Google Voice features to create this instant translator. Google hopes to have a basic system ready within the next couple of years. If successful it could transform communication amongst the world’s 6000 languages.
It would work by the user speaking in any language, which Google would then convert and translate back in the chosen language. Google Voice, Google Mobile search and similar products do already use speech to text services, and Google Translate already has some languages that will speak back to you. Bridging the gap between these and improving the underlying technology will hopefully make this new tool a success.
Automatic text translators have recently become very effective, however understandably voice recognition is a bigger challenge. Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services said, “Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch, but recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you. The phone should get a feel for your voice from past voice search queries, for example.”
The translation tool is therefore likely to become more effective and accurate the more it is used. Google is using its vast database of websites and translated documents to improve the accuracy of this tool.
We all look forward to following the progressions that Google make with this new software and to hopefully easing language barriers in the future.
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Great PR by Google. My guess is that we are months away from the Beta version.
Is it helping on SEO to use google translate? will google index all of my website pages in every language?