great idea for a new invention

As I am discussing traveling, I can't help but set my sights on more distant lands. I hope to one day visit places across the ocean, like Europe or Asia. As my mother in law is from Canada and speaks fluid French, I've always thought that it might be a little more convenient to invite her to go with us as a translator for when we're in French speaking countries. My wife and I both took French back in high school, but I have no idea whether we would be able to keep up if we were visiting France. Some people talk very fast, and seeing as I am more interested in venturing off the beaten path, we may find ourselves in non-tourist areas where native bilingual skills are more limited.

I was recently thinking about voice recognition software and those handy little translator devices that you can take with you, and I was thinking that it would make so much sense of someone were to combine the two. In a sense, it would be like having closed captioning for real life. You could carry your little hand-held voice recognition device with you and as others speak to you, it could translate what they are saying. Unfortunately, I don't think we're quit there yet with voice recognition, as most of the software that I have see takes some time to effectively "learn" a certain persons voice. However, seeing as many large companies are now using voice recognition for their customer service systems (with arguable success) for a multitude of customer calls, I would suspect that we are not that far off from implementing this same technology in other places.

Of course, traveling "purists" might say that this is missing the whole point of visiting other countries. What good is visiting another land if you're not willing to absorb yourself in their culture? My only problem with that is that areas like Europe have countries that are very near each other and yet speak different languages. To effectively communicate across Europe, I would suspect that you would have to learn Spanish, German, French, and Italian...maybe other languages, too. And seeing as not all of us have the cash to visit often enough to polish up on our foreign languages, I don't see this as a viable solution.

Sci-fi authors have already foreseen this type of translation technology. I can't remember the names, but I know that I have seen movies where someone is wearing a small button or pin that automatically translates what someone is saying to the other person's language. What they don't explain is how it makes it so that they cannot hear the original words being spoken at the same time.

I can picture a "Whisper 2000" styled apparatus, like an ipod that allows you to get a custom translation while in a foreign land. And like an Imac, I can see something that even allows you to customize the type of translation you hear...be it a male or female voice, a robotic voice, etc. Eventually, I suspect that it would detect the timber of the speaker's voice, and mimic it appropriately.

Just think of how much easier it will be to find the bathroom in a foreign country!