Fun with Translations

I saw this product and thought it was pretty interesting. It is used to translate languages. You can speak into the gadget, it will "read" what you said, translate your words to another language and then "speak" in that language. Suppose that I am in Germany and do not speak German. I go into a train station and go up to a conductor. I speak into this box, "What time does the train leave?", the box translates it into German and asks the question to the conductor.

Unfortunately, the technology is still limited at this time. It will not allow just any words. It must be one of the 4200 phrases entered. The languages are limited to German, Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. Also, the translation is one way. It only works from English to another language. Hopefully it will get to the point where it translates back to me the German conductor's response.

For more details on this product, follow this link: speechtranslator. For a video of similar product, click this link: video. Note: this technology was originally developed for the military. You can see this in the video.

Another interesting gadget:





























The product shown in the first picture, will superimpose text on the lens of the glasses. In the second picture, the glasses have superimposed the train number(2) and the departure time (14:17) of the train. An article on the glasses can be found here: Glasses

Eventually, they would like to combine the two technologies. Suppose I am walking down a street in Finland. I look at a store. The glasses will read the store sign in Finnish, translate it to English and superimpose the English translation on the glasses. So when I look at the store sign, I will see "Pekka's Drug Store". Sounds pretty cool to me.