14 DAY TRIAL // At a conference in Germany, Google showcased a mobile translation feature that feels more at home on the Hollywood filming sets than in a phone you can buy in any store.
Google Translate conversation mode will enable two people, who speak different languages, to have a conversation using Google's voice recognition, translation and text-to-speech technologies.
While none of these technologies are new and are all available already on mobile devices like the ones powered by the Android OS, making them work together the way Google has managed is no less magical.
Each of the participants of the conversation talk in their native language while the Android-powered phones and the Google back-end translates and speaks each part of the conversation in the other participant's language.
The smartphone thus becomes a virtual translator, if you will, making it easy for tourists to get around in foreign countries, business partners from different countries to have private conversations and so on. The applications for the feature are practically countless.
Not to mention the wow factor of being able to do what has been presented as a futuristic technology in basically every Sci Fi movie or show ever made.
And Google is not done yet, the goal is to bring down the time it takes Google to make the translation so that the voice translation is done in real-time.
While the feature won't be available for a few more months and is still labeled experimental, it is already impressive. The demo didn't go as smoothly as possible, as the software failed to recognize what one interlocutor was saying at one point.
Of course, as anyone who has ever used Google Translate knows, the technology is far from perfect. And it may end up creating quite an embarrassing or, at least, odd situation in real-life. But the technology will improve in time.