Douglas Adams' babelfish becomes a reality?

Great. So after three years learning Chinese and countless years spent learning other languages, someone came up with this.

[quote]A “Tower of Babel” device that gives the illusion of being bilingual is being developed by US scientists.

Users simply have to silently mouth a word in their own language for it to be translated and read out in another.

The researchers said the effect was like watching a television programme that had been dubbed.

The system, detailed in New Scientist, is not yet fully accurate, but experts said it showed the technology was “within reach”.[/quote]

Of course, the main hurdle with technology like this is the translation machine at the core, not the delivery of this information.

I’m of the opinion that machine translation will take genuine AI to reach a level acceptable to human conversation. Only when a computer can actually “learn” a language (rather than having it input as a dictionary + grammar algorithm) will the results start to put polyglots out of business.

Still, it’s interesting stuff.

I would gladly put a fish in my ear if it would help me with these daily goddamn Chinese tests. Arg.

If you read my location, you’d see that I have had my own babelfish for while now already.

Mine doesn’t need any kind of programming as it was made by the great creator himself…

Now if it would only work. :stinkyface: