Amazing Star Trek type translator allows you to speak in 26 languages

03-20-2012 • Terrence Aym

When the popular television series "Star Trek" debuted in the Fall of 1966, one of the many futuristic gadgets the crew of the Starship Enterprise had at its disposal was a fascinating little gizmo called a "universal translator." The device helped Kirk, Spock and crew communicate with alien races, since most green blobs and lizard people don't speak English. The translator became like the Holy Grail to many software engineers looking to make 23rd Century technology available today.

Now two brilliant software engineers have succeeded. Just such a translator-that converts any one of 26 pre-programmed spoken languages virtually real-time into any of the other 25 languages has been successfully created and demonstrated by Frank Soong and Rick Rashid.