University of Toronto professor Graeme Hirst says that although much progress has been made in translation technology over the last decade, researchers are still a long way from a universal small talk translator. For example, scientists at the IBM Watson Research Center have developed handheld devices capable of translating speech in near real time. Someone can ask a question in Mandarin Chinese and in a few seconds the device can translate the question to English. Translation devices capable of recognizing certain languages and translating vocabularies of certain sectors are quite effective in medical, military, tourism, and other applications. However, these devices are limited in that they work best when people speak clearly, slowly, and ask simple questions or make simple statements. “Translation is a human linguistic and cognitive task that involves understanding ideas and aligning sentences in context,” Hirst says. Most text-to-text translators rely on word-to-word translators, but some more accurate systems use large volumes of text that has been correctly translated from the input language to the output language. IBM researcher David Nahamoo believes that a real-time universal translator will not be available anytime soon, but says people speaking different languages may start using a combination of speech-to-text and text-to-speech technology in the near future.

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Inspired by the struggles rescue workers faced following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, researchers in Norway, Spain, and Finland launched the CELTIC project DeHiGate to develop technology that ensures the use of phones and the Internet even in difficult, remote terrain and chaotic situations. “Our idea was to make a sophisticated box that you could connect to all kinds of communications centers like satellite and wireless, a box that emergency services could take with them instead of a big satellite dish,” says Thales researcher Vidar Karlsen. He says the challenge was developing and testing new software to make the box work the way the researchers wanted. Spanish telecoms operator Telefonica developed a way to use large servers on the move, making it possible to deploy large networks in remote areas. Firefighters participated in simulations testing the technology, including testing emergency ad hoc radio stations to deploy communications, Internet access, and video-sharing capabilities, which allows emergency responders to track where every emergency worker is in real time. The researchers say the technology could have uses beyond emergency response. “The results and the ideas which came up in this project, both in terms of architecture and applications, have been the foundation for the development of a large project about personalization, advertising, and the use of telephone directory services,” says Telefonica’s Erik Miguel.

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