Month: August 2009

While I was in Berlin I sat amongst friendly Germans wondering what it was they were talking and laughing about. It was frustrating and I thought ‘Oh I wish they had subtitles’. This device brings together technology that exists already to provide translated subtitles below the speaker. To explain, the speech is picked up by a microphone, this is then converted to text by an inbuilt processor (Spoken word to text software already exists). Then that text is internally translated into the selected language and displayed on the screen. Of course to have a conversation both parties need to wear the subtitles set to their listener’s language. The processor has to be very fast but technology is getting there…

The above idea takes away the subtitles and instead turns the translated text into electronic spoken word.

Credits: Originals: Top photograph by Marjo Wright/PictureThis, Second photo by Howard Stredwick and model Thomas Tsui

Aug 19th, 2009