Blog - Japan's DoCoMo Invents Realtime Translation Device

The Bablefish-like device could break down language barriers, if it improves a little.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the English sci-fi humorist Douglas Adams famously conjured the Babel Fish, a "small, yellow, leech-like creature" able to tap directly into the speech center of the brain, thereby providing instant and universal language translation. The creature was so useful, wrote Adams, that some chose to see it as prove of God's non-existence. "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing'. 'But,' says man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves you exist and so therefore you don't. QED.' 'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=fa58de6dac45a7e64db4ce0ac9a2a34b

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