G oogle leaps language barrier with translator phone from The Times Online reports Google is working on a new tool that would bring instant translation to people. You would speak to it in any language, Google would then convert that and spit it back in the language of choice. [1]

In Douglas Adams's humorous sci-fi novel series Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a special kind of fish is mentioned - the Babel Fish. It's essentially a combination of two of Google's existing technologies ; its online universal translator service, Google Translate, and its voice recognition system. Google plans to make its Babel Fish a lot like a human translator ; the software would analyze chunks of speech, and translate them in their entirety rather than translating word for word. [2]

"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time," Franz Och, Google's (GOOG) head of translation services, told the New York Times. A worthy goal, and admirable too, since such a technology, were it to work well, would really herald an end to language barriers. [3]