IF YOU are puzzled when the German waiter asks you: “Was möchten Sie?”
all you have to do is to reach for your mobile phone. Not only will the phone
tell you that the waiter is asking you what you want, it will even translate
your order into German.
The system, called Verbmobil, can translate spoken English, German, Japanese
and Chinese almost instantaneously. It operates over a standard mobile phone
network—you just dial a number. Verbmobil, the product of a
$90-million research programme, was demonstrated in Seattle last
week.
“It’s 90 per cent accurate,” says Wolfgang Wahlster from the artificial…
