I'm seeing more and more offerings of technologically mediated international communication bridging language barriers around the world. The latest is a service from Talking Technologies, a division of Nettel Holdings, Inc. The service is free during the current trial period.
I took it for a spin, sending myself an SMS message that the service was to translate into Spanish. I only know enough Spanish to get myself into trouble, but what came through seemed fairly good for machine translation. Next, I sent myself an SMS-to-E-mail message and asked the service to translate it from English to Japanese. Let's hope that the translation engine is improved dramatically before they try to start charging for the service. The translation was pretty dismal.
The press release says the service provides translation in 30 languages, but there are only 13 available now (see the screen shot).
The services offered include:
- Cell to cell text and audio
- Cell to fax
- Cell to land line phone text and audio
- Cell to Email text and audio
- Cell to Instant Messenger (Yahoo or Hotmail)
