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With a "Linguistor,"
everyone will be able to speak multiple languages!
This Bluetooth accessory extends
the capabilities of the ubiquitous cellphone to new heights
of versatility, essentially morphing a common man into a virtual
linguist in an instant. By utilizing the telephonic interpretation
paradigm, the user of this gadget will in essence have a competent
human interpreter who can speak up to a hundred different languages
by his/her side anytime of the day for a very low cost. And
when machine language translation systems (MT) becomes viable,
the usage cost will even be much lower.
How it works:
User speaking to a foreigner scenario:
Upon covering the user's mouth by swinging the
Linguistor inward, the integrated Bluetooth transceiver pairs
with a cellphone automatically and then dials a preset telephone
number of an interpreter, such as a telephonic interpreter,
a machine translation system (MT), or a friend who speaks the
foreigner's language. The user's speech is captured by the internal
mic and is sent to the interpreter by the transceiver via a
cellphone. The interpreter sends the interpretation back, which
is now in the foreigner's language, to the Linguistor's transceiver
where it is amplified and the loudspeaker allows a foreigner
situated as far as 20 feet away to hear the interpretation.
Using a 3-watt loudspeaker, powered by the amplified transceiver,
provides the Linguistor a 3-times performance advantage over
a typical cellphone's speaker. Furthermore, since it has its
own battery, a much longer period of interpretation time can
be achieved compared to solely using the cellphone for doing
the same task.
How it works:
Foreigner speaking to the user scenario:
The foreigner speaks toward the Linguistor user
and the external mic captures the foreigner's speech. The integrated
Bluetooth transceiver, via the user's cellphone, sends the signal
to the remotely located interpreter. The interpreted speech,
which is now in the user's native language, is received by the
transceiver and is converted into audio. The user then hears
the interpreted speech through the earphone.
The unit's soundproofed
housing, which blocks outside noise, and the internal mic being
always at a fixed distance from the user's mouth, ensures that
the interpreter hears a clear speech from the user. A clear
speech input results in a more accurate interpretation of the
user's speech. One other beneficial feature of the Linguistor
housing is that it reduces jumbling of the user's speech with
the vocalized translated speech, thus making the inter-lingual
exchange more effective.
The Linguistor can also
be leveraged to use Machine Translation technology instead of
human interpreters. This would bring the cost of interpretation
down considerably. However, the state of electronic interpretation
is still in its infancy but for some people it is worth using
it. For example, Jibbigo (www.jibbigo.com) is a smartphone app
that runs on the smarthphone itself and charges $4.95 for a
language pair, but does not incur any roaming charges. The other
apps, such as Google Translate, SpeechTrans, Trippo VoiceMagix,
etc., which are usually free, require that they be connected
to the cloud to function, thus incurring roaming charges. Although
currently these machine translation apps are much clunkier than
human interpreters, they are expected to be much improved in
the next couple of years due to the rapid rise in the skills
of software engineers.
We will be launching Linguistor within
a few months.
*Patent-pending:
USPTO Application # 20100185432
For more details about
this patent, please visit:
http://appft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
Enter the number and
select the Document Number field.
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Feature
Links:
WIFAI: Handheld wireless interpreter
Jibbigo
- Mobile voice translation software
Google
Translate - Conversation mode
Language
Line: Apple Iphone app
Telephonic
Interpreting - SpeakEasy
Telephonic
Interpreting - CodeTalker
Continental
Interpreting
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