next time a chinese waiter looks at you expectantly and says "Ni xian dian shen me, " all you have to do is reach for your mobie phone not only will it tell you that your witer is asking what you want to oder; it will translate your order in to chinese or japanese,or german.
The system,called verbmobil, can translate basic spoken english,japanese, chimese and german almost instaneously. it opertes over a standrad mobie phone network jost dial the number, get the waider to speak in to the phone,and listen when it trans lates his words back to you.
text- based translators like alta-virta's babet fish have existed for some time. but their translations are often poor. the problem is even mere difficolt with spoken language because of back round noise and people's tendency do use ungrmmatical sentences. unike cther translations, verbmobil which is the use ungrammatical the prodoot of a 94- millon research program-doesn't filter out background noise.