Why the fishy title? The Babel Fish is Not at babelfish.com. DO NOT go there. I just did and it is a terrible ill-functioning site that stole its name from the real thing. The REAL Babel Fish is a useful tiny yellow worm that goes in your ear, siphons energy from you and anyone around you as it’s intake or “food,” source, but THEN poops back out the speech patterns of those around you so that SUDDENLY, you can understand anyone no matter what language. Douglas Adams created and placed this creature into the Hitchhiker’s guide 44 years ago. We can’t quite buy a worm yet…but we CAN buy a few nifty wearables that translate today.
This kind of tech puts Moore’s Law to use which observed that around every 2 years, the tiny switches (transistors) in circuits doubles and gives us even stronger microprocessors capable of advancing everything we wish to accomplish! For example, there are big upgrades in smartphone, camera, and video game technology every 2 years. Thus, we are coming closer to the Babel Fish with many earbuds available on the market. These fit in your ear wirelessly and pair with devices. None of them can translate every language yet. The number of languages and accents supported by each earbud varies, but you can sift though some ads on your browser and find claims that they can translate 45 to 85 languages and 90 or so accents.
There is a new glove being patented at UCLA that can translate American Sign Language into speech. It uses sensors attached down the fingers of the glove and real-time algorithms to detect movement and translates through a smartphone. This is similar to the new Apple Watch technology that detects gestures in the air to perform certain functions. The glove uses an app to translate while the watch uses its own display but can access an app called Sign-Time to get a live interpreter from Apple via the American Sign Language (ASL) and only translates 11 languages as its main focus is entertainment at this time. Stanford is developing a spray on mesh for the back of the hand that creates a tiny electrical network that stretches and senses to make communication easier as well.
Boasting its language capabilities also, is a new AI pin you can wear by Humane that projects its app onto your own hand. I have a link to the demonstration on their site below of this and other amazing features. In the video one person is speaking in Spanish. The other person hits the button on the pin and suddenly hears it in English. They then speak back, and it plays the reply in Spanish! This will revolutionize both sales and customer service processes in the business and travel industry since it can not only auto-detect the language but can be forced into any language.
There is also a pair of glasses made by Google that are able to translate words and sign language and also, into words you read on the lenses. So many fish have come from the Babel fish concept including a brain transplant we are moving toward that lets us share our thoughts in progress at Duke University. Having one with you is as important as having your towel and if you don’t know what that means…check out my Hitchhiker’s guide page. This would allow us to communicate with so many different people who are suffering disabilities that made communication impossible before.
Keep an eye on my blog as I bring your more advancements in tech that help bring us all closer together and help us in our daily lives. PLEASE be sure to bookmark my page first, but if you would like to further explore my sources, they were:
https://www.earth.com/news/brain-implant-may-allow-people-to-communicate-through-their-thoughts/
Wearable-tech glove translates sign language into speech in real time (techxplore.com)
Spray-on smart skin uses AI to rapidly understand hand tasks (techxplore.com)
Google Debuts Smart Glasses Built With Real-Time Language Translation | PCMag
