Facebook has announced that it has bought Mobile Technologies, a small company specializing in speech translation software. StarTrek fans are familiar with the 'universal translator', a brain implant that allows any humanoid race in the galaxy to speak their own language and be instantly understood in the other person's language. Mobile Technologies' software is far from that sophisticated, but, in theory, it could allow someone to speak in their own language and be simultaneously translated into another language.
Mobile Technologies, founded in 2001, already has an application – it's called Jibbigo – for voice-to-voice translation. And Facebook still has a lot to make up for, after having made an IPO at $38, dropped to $17, and only now returned to its initial price. It looks for new ways to expand, despite its 74 billion users, and perhaps this new technology will offer even more gains (its p/e is a disheartening XNUMX). It remains to be seen whether the voice-to-voice translation is less bad than the translation of written texts. Anyone who believes that the latter is ready is invited to do this test: take an Italian text, have it translated by Google into English, then take the translated English text and have it translated back into Italian. Then compare this artifact with the Italian original: the result is usually hilarious…
http://www.japantoday.com/category/technology/view/facebook-t-buy-firm-specializing-in-voice-translation
Attachments: japan today
