While on a recent trip to Brazil, I managed to get around with a very rudimentary grasp of Portuguese and knowledge of a few well-worn phrases; “please,” “thank you,” “how much does this cost,” and so on. While most of the Brazilians I met were able to figure out what I was trying to tell them, I often had problems understanding what they were trying to tell me.
Of course I would have killed for a “Universal Translator,” which has been a sci-fi dream for years (along with being a convenient plot device to explain why aliens all speak perfect English) - such a device would enable people to communicate clearly despite their respective spoken languages.
In what may be a step toward that ultimate goal, NEC announced a prototype language translation system called the “Tele Scouter”:
The Tele Scouter glasses feature a compact microphone and camera, which picks up the foreign-language conversation. This audio recording is then relayed to a small computer worn on the user’s waist, which transmits the information to a remote server. The server translates the words from speech to text, and transmits it back to the glasses, where the translated phrase is then appears on a tiny retinal display, providing the wearer with a transcript of the conversation in their own language.
Unfortunately, the technology to provide actual real-time translation hasn’t been perfected yet, so NEC will be marketing the glasses as a “wearable, hands-free data display,” expected to go on sale in 2010.