Google leaps barrier with translator phone

GOOGLE’S making the first phone able to translate foreign languages almost instantly.

The Sunday Times of London reports that by building on existing technologies in voice recognition and automatic translation, Google hoped to have a basic system ready within a couple of years.

If it worked, it could eventually transform communication among speakers of the world’s 6000-plus languages.

The company already created an automatic system for translating text on computers, which was being honed by scanning millions of multi-lingual websites and documents.

It added Haitian Creole last week to bring the language total to 52.

Google also has a voice recognition system that enabled phone users to conduct web searches by speaking commands into their phones rather than typing them in.