Interpreting languages can be a real challenge. It’s especially difficult for frequent overseas travelers or those who converse with foreign clients over the phone. Google wants to make things easier with smartphone translator software that will instantly convert the words you speak from one language to another while on the phone.

They’ve been doing it for some time with text translation, and now speech-to-speech translation is possible with ‘high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition’ only. The idea is that the users phone would adapt to the user by learning their style of talking and make it easier to translate in real time.

[GW]

Learning a new language isn’t something you do in five minutes. It takes time and practice. But having a robot help you may speed things up. TalkingRobo is a personal robot that can teach you to speak a new language. The bot features speech recognition and understands natural language when you talk to it. He is nice enough to suggest what topics to talk about so you can practice. He also has face recognition so more than one user can use him and he will recognize your face and understand your user profile. In short, he will be your new bestest buddy.

Those aren’t his only tricks either. He can recognize images. If you show it an image of an airplane, for example, it will give you the correct pronunciation of airplane, which seems like a great way to learn. Some other features include a Beam projector for displaying novels and watching movies, English dictionary and Encyclopedia, internet connectivity for updates and you can use it remotely to keep an eye on your home if you like too.

A device that automatically translates other languages instantly still seems like science fiction, even today. But we are getting very close. Check out NEC’s Tele Scouter. It’s a retinal-display that translates what people say to you by displaying the translations as text on your glasses.

It looks pretty bulky still, but even at that size it is impressive. It requires a computer to be hooked up to the glasses to do the bulk of the work. And even then, the translations aren’t good enough yet to make wearing this thing practical. But soon it will be.

An acoustics engineer named John Stuart Reid from the UK, is creating a machine that does the unthinkable. He claims it will enable people to “read” the “dolphin language.” The device is called the Cymascope, and it converts the sounds dolphins make when communicating into images, which can then be mapped into a sort of dictionary, then later “read” by people trying to understand what that dolphin is going on about.

I’m guessing half of the chatter is LOL and OMG or how they totally owned that human. The Cymascope uses a pool of water monitored by a video camera, along with some sand, brass plates and a violin bow. It sounds pretty wacky.

You own the dictionary. You speak the language. Sadly, you’ve even tried to pick up women using the Klingon tongue. Unsuccessfully of course. But until now, you have not been able to type with a Klingon keyboard. Well, Cherry Keyboards’ Klingon Language keyboard has your back. All it needs is a PS/2 port and a willing nerd. You’re good to go.

They were able to keep it looking like regular keyboards thanks to the fact that the Klingon alphabet has 26 characters, the same as the English language. Now you can pretend to be a Klingon ALL the time, not just at the conventions. Just don’t sit in front of it all day long typing Klingon love letters and death threats, or else your fake armor isn’t going to fit over your gut anymore.

This portable hand-held scanning translator can scan a word or a full line of text and give you an immediate translation, even idioms and phrases. It’s the Quicktionary TS from Wizcom and it comes preloaded with English-Spanish-English and English-French-English for instant translation. You also get the American Heritage dictionary for English definitions. It will let you hear the words spoken and the touch screen lets you access the dictionary functions by manually typing in words. It’s available now for $179.95.