Babel fish phones
Looks like my daughter’s first keitai will come with a built-in translation feature.
Translation cell phone in the making for 2007 release
A groundbreaking cell phone that automatically translates the speaker’s language from Japanese to English and vice versa could be on the market by 2007, it has been learned.
Actually, I believe UltraBob was involved in providing a somewhat similar service (using real people to do the translating) before he went on to establish Akatombo Media. Looks like he may have gotten out of that business just in time.
Of course, given the difficulty of creating machine translations that are actually meaningful to the target audience, it may be a while before all the kinks are worked out of the system. If it works, though, it will be cool to have a Babel fish in my pocket.
