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Universal translator moves closer

The merger of two American companies will enable smartphones such as BlackBerries, iPhones or Windows Mobile devices to become voice and text translators.

American based Dial Directions makes voice recognition and activation software used for driving directions on cell phones. Has merged with Sakhr, who focus on Arabic language and speech technology.

Together they have produced a mobile application for voice and text translation that processes English or Arabic spoken into a phone, then translates it into speech and text by means of a cloud-based service. At present it’s not quite a real time universal translator but it’s close. Translation capability is still short of perfect with 70% to 80% accuracy for transcribing a single language to text.

The US government is after 95% accuracy for translating Arabic and Chinese speech and text, in a research program known as Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE), which involves the Sakhr company.

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