Sometimes, I think we live in the 24th century.  From PADD technology to molecule replication we are that much closer to living in a reality known only to the likes of James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard.  In a few years, Google could be bringing us one step closer with true voice universal translation.  Right now, engineers are working on the first voice over phone real-time translation.

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” said Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services.  "Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that’s what we’re working on."

But, there are few hurtles to overcome. “Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch,” said Och. “But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you. The phone should get a feel for your voice from past voice search queries, for example.”

According to Och, the technology will learn to adapt the more you use it. “The more data we input, the better the quality,” said Och. There is no shortage of help. “There are a lot of language enthusiasts out there,”.

We love this kinda stuff.  It's definitely an exciting time to be alive and as a Trek fan, we can live out our futuristic fantasies.  (no, not that kind of fantasy)

(Quote source TimesOnline)