Last month, Google unveiled its latest innovation, an app for phones that can near-simultaneously translate speech from one language to another.
"Google Conversation," so far only available to translate between Spanish and English, generated excited headlines speculating that a true universal translator -- an idea popularized by "Star Trek" -- might be just around the corner.
It's easy to get swept up by the buzz. Google's current text-based "Translate" online software is as good as it's ever been, allowing users to get reasonably faithful translations between scores of languages.
The company is also adapting its "Google Goggles" picture recognition software to allow phone users to translate signs. Recently it said it was looking at taking the quantum leap into translating poetry.
Google Product Manager Awaneesh Verma admitted when launching "Translate" that the device was "still in its earliest stages," and early demos have shown it to be a little shaky at performing its task.
Nevertheless, the potential is obvious. If the technology improves we could all soon be roaming the world as polyglots, freely conversing in any language and dialect.
Sadly, say experts in the field, we could be waiting some time -- a fact that becomes painfully clear when looking at the history of computerized translation.
Still has a long way to go....
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