"Star Trek" just keeps coming true. Our cell phones are their communicators. The Internet, of course, is the real-life version of their computer that has all human knowledge. Now we're one step closer to the universal translator:
One day, a U.S. soldier entering tense situations without the assistance of an Arabic interpreter might rely on two-way translation software in mobile computers.This year the military's Joint Forces Command has been testing laptops with such software in Iraq. When someone speaks into a microphone attached to the computer, the machine translates it into Arabic and reads that translation aloud over the PC's speakers. The software then translates the Arabic speaker's response and utters it in English.
I do hope the translation software is a little better than what is currently available on the Web. Just for kicks, go to a site like Alta Vista's Babel Fish sometime and translate a sentence into any other language, then translate the result back into English. Here, for example, is "Could I please get the senior citizen discount?" translated from English to Spanish and back to English: "It could satisfy with himself the discount with the pensioner?" Here's the English-to-Greek-to-English version: "I could I request I take the handing-over of superior citizens?" You can have hours of fun with this -- try from English to another language to a third language and back to English.
This level of imprecision would be perhaps adequate if one were trying, with appropriate hand gestures, to pay a restaurant bill or pick up someone in a bar, but it might be a tad dangerous if the goal were to discover whether an Iraqi wanted to sell you a postcard or kill you.
"Captain Kirk, Captain Kirk! The Klingon says he wants to book a hotel room at a discount rate!"
