New tech speaks many languages at once

Well, here we go.
As in the Star Trek series, here is the first developement of what is going to be awesome. Imagine being able to go to a foriegn country and being able to speak the language.

Alex Waibel, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and Germany's University of Karlsruhe, plans to demonstrate a host of software and hardware on Thursday at CMU's Pittsburgh campus. The technology could make it far easier for people who speak different languages to understand each other.

One application, informally called Lecture Translation, translates a speech from one language into another on the fly and without restrictions. Current translation technologies typically circumscribe speakers to certain topics or a limited vocabulary and require them to train on the application.

news.com.com...

Roddenberry was way ahead of his time.

I've been hearing about this technology for a couple of years now, really neat stuff! A more primitive version of this tech is already being deployed in Iraq and Afganistan, called teh Phraselator.

I just wanna know when this tech will come standard on all cellphones, as that is where it will be the more usefull. Might have to add a louder speaker in addition to the regular one so the person you're talking to doesn'thave t use you handset

Think of the possiblities should this technology become main stream usage. It would effectively allow for the world to come closer to each other. It would also be helpful for people who never had the chance to learn another language. Only one question though, you reckon it will be able to translate welsh ?

I really doubt this technology is anything more than a translator. Remember that in Star Trek, the universal translator is able to infer language from its patterns...something which is not doable, because one can not derive a function from its result.