This stuff is going to get real, soon. From Google’s latest Technology Roundtable Series:
[This] video, “Applications of Human Language Technology,” is a discussion of our enormous progress in large-scale automated translation of languages and speech recognition. Both of these technology domains are coming of age with capabilities that will truly impact what we expect of computers on a day-to-day basis. I discuss these technologies with human language technology experts Franz Josef Och, an expert in the automated translation of languages, and Mike Cohen, an expert in speech processing.
BTW, isn’t it funny how so many VP level people (note the guy introducing the piece) at Google says “Google” exactly the way Larry and Sergey say it, and not at all the way most of the rest of us say it? There’s this funny, compressed, geeky inflection on the “ooooo” sound.