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VoxOx starts to make the internet non-language specific

edited February 2010 in Technology
Ran across this application a little bit ago. Here's the scenario: You have friends or family from around the world (or next door) that your language isn't their native language. You can always leave a translation program open and copy paste items into it and then back into your email, SMS, IM, twitter, or . This tries to resolve that. Instead of translating after the fact, this program allows you to translate as you send, as well as translating as texts come in. To quote some marketing spiel: "The person on the other side might not even know you don't speak their language" (assuming the translation is that good).

It acts quit similarly in appearance and function as some weird combination of Skype and Adium. Social media integration is in place as well as IMing, SMS, twitter, as well as your standard video chat client, and other "normal" chat things. Software is currently Mac & Windows only, with Mobile versions (android, iPhone OS, etc) and Linux coming soonish.

I see this as the first step in the internet truly becoming a universal place where language barriers don't exists. Now this is definitely still in early stages and you probably get a lot of "translation laughs" out of it, but this is a step in the right direction. Eventually i can see google (or the "next big company") making this but with the spoken word. I know google is already using Google Goggles to do real time translation of printed media, so the technology is there. Just need to implement it.

Site is VoxOx.com and I found a video over on Engadget showing off the new translation software. What do you think? Is this sort of translation software the next thing? Or is the internet going to continue it's march of English only, with pockets of language specific sites/services?

Comments

  • Should also note this program is in Alpha, but still runs pretty well. Both their account and the program are free, and the support and suggestion queues are rather impressive by using a limited voting system.
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