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The future of real-time,
face-to-face language translation is finally here!
Introducing WIFAI - Wireless Interface
For Advanced Interpreting. The WIFAI is a pocket-sized wireless
device that allows anyone to communicate in realtime, face-to-face,
with a person who speaks a different language. This patent-pending
device works together with a cellphone and will revolutionize
the way people interact with their foreign speaking neighbors,
friends, and workers, especially in the home healthcare field.
This device will make it affordable for companies to expand
their business beyond borders. Having this device is like being
accompanied by over a hundred language translators that the
user can avail of anywhere and anytime.
User
speaking to a foreigner scenario:
Upon unfolding the WIFAI, the integrated
Bluetooth transceiver pairs with a cellphone automatically and
then dials a preset telephone number of an interpreter, such
as a telephonic interpreter, or a friend who speaks the foreigner's
language. The user's speech is captured by the internal mic
and is sent to the interpreter via the celphone by the WIFAI
transceiver. The interpretation is received by the WIFAI transceiver
where it is amplified and the loudspeaker allows a foreigner
to hear the interpretation as far as 20 feet away. Furthermore,
since it has its own battery, a much longer period of interpretation
time can be achieved compared to using the speakerphone of a
cellphone.
Foreigner
speaking to the user scenario:
The foreigner speaks
toward the WIFAI user and the external mic captures the foreigner's
speech. The integrated Bluetooth transceiver, via the user's
cellphone, sends the signal to the remotely located interpreter.
The interpreted speech is received by the transceiver and is
converted into audio. The user then hears the interpreted speech
through the earphone.
The unit's soundproofed housing,
which blocks outside noise, and the internal mic being always
at a fixed distance from the user's mouth, ensures that the
interpreter hears a clear speech from the user. A clear speech
input results in a more accurate interpretation of the user's
speech. One other beneficial feature of the WIFAI housing is
that it reduces jumbling of the user's speech with the vocalized
translated speech, thus making the inter-lingual exchange more
effective.
Using
the WIFAI with Machine Translation software:
The user speaks into
the WIFAI mic whereby the application software such as Jibbigo
or Google Translate Conversation mode, running on the cellphone,
translates the speech into the foreigner's language and is vocalized
by the WIFAI speaker. Conversely, the foreigner's speech is
translated into the user's language which is outputted into
the earphone.
The state of electronic interpretation
is still in its infancy. However, due to it being a much cheaper
interpretation solution compared to human interpreters, for
some people it is worth using it. For example, Jibbigo (www.jibbigo.com)
is a smartphone app that runs on the smarthphone itself and
charges $4.95 for a language pair, but does not incur any roaming
charges. The other apps, such as Google Translate, SpeechTrans,
Trippo VoiceMagix, etc., which are usually free, require that
they be connected to the cloud to function, thus incurring roaming
charges. Although currently these machine translation apps are
much clunkier than human interpreters, they are expected to
be much improved in the next couple of years due to the rapid
rise in the skills of software engineers.
We will be launching WIFAI within
a few months.
*Patent-pending:
USPTO Application # 20100169073
For more details about
this patent, please visit:
http://appft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
Enter the number and
select the Document Number field.
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