LingoPhone Provides Mobile Translation

LingoPhone.com now provides mobile, on-the-spot translation services via cellphone. The service works with any mobile phone equipped to send and receive text messages.

Go back and forth between most permutations of English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Portuguese. The cost? Just two-tenths of a Euro per call.

They are even working on translating text message jargon like "I wud lik 2 hire a car pls" - now, that's a lingo phone!

The advantages of using a centralized service through your cell phone (as opposed to the language translator gadgets shown at left) are

  • You don't need to carry around an extra unit
  • The service is constantly updated, with an unlimited dictionary.
Science fiction readers are already familiar with these services. In Idoru, William Gibson's 1996 novel, Chia uses the computer translator service on her Sandbenders to access Japanese speech translation services (Japanese to English) on-the-fly. You may also remember Douglas Adams' babelfish.

See How to Use the LingoPhone Service on their site.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/21/2003)

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