There is this new technology has been introduced at the Tech Fest 2010.
Its called the Translating Telephone. As the name suggests it translates voice chat of one language to another. This is introduced by Microsoft Research.
As per the demo, I am really impressed by the technology behind it. It not only translates the voice into other language in a text format but also the voice format. This concept is quite old but by looking at the demo, I think that it would come out to be useful for people doing international business.
The really cool thing is that this system will translate it into a commonly spoken language with use of slang words. I could tell you from my own experience that people from different countries may have a hard time understanding the slang words from a particular country. While I was new to Michigan it was really hard for me to understand certain words I came across because we have our own set English slang words. The funny thing was some professors used slang too which were confusing to me. But anyway I hope this technology really prove to be as workable as it promises to be.
