Slashdot reports that there is current technology to allow simultaneous speech-to-speech translation. This was recently demo-ed at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh during a videoconference call between Alex Waibel, from CMU, and viewers in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Waibel's speech was translated automatically into German and Spanish via electrodes attached to his face and neck. Scientists claim that said electrodes could be implanted in your mouth and throat within 10 years.
It does solve the age-old question of decades of TV viewers. I always wondered how the space explorers on Star Trek automatically understood any alien life form they came into contact with.
So much for actually learning a foreign language.
I do admit I could have used the "translation goggles" recently featured in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on my recent trip abroad. I commented at the time, that I think all French speaking people should come with automatic captioning, since French is often not spoken the same way as it is spelled. The goggles display captions of translated speech that can only be seen by the wearer.
No longer will you have to lament, "I can read and write the language, but I can't understand it."
Future technology--to boldly go where no one has gone before!
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