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
Dominic Wilcox 
Haniball Lector mask looks a bit scary can you give it a tele-tubby feel please
otherwise brilliant !
thanks! Maybe pig snout masks may appeal to the kids more…
World war two spifire pilot throat mike
Just found your blog at google and liked it.
it’s similar to this 🙂
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/11/25/iphone-translator-app-speaks-for-you-using-your-mouth/
I love this blog, Dominic! So glad you found me on flickr. 🙂 for this i just need to shout out: Babelfish! and also: shame on the Germans you met. They mostly speak good English and are well able to translate for you. I would have. 🙂
I had this exact same idea! I was thinking you could also do it by wearing a little projector yourself that projects the subtitles onto the other person’s shirt.
xezlec. And if the shirt is black ?
I’ve had enough of this.