With the world becoming more globally linked and rise of the number of friends I have on Facebook that speak a completely different language to me, wouldn’t it be great to communicate with them without having to learn each other’s language?

Well, this might all be reality in a couple of years time as search engine giant Google is busy working on speech-to-speech translation, which could mean that you’ll probably be able to verbally chat with your foreign speaking friends over the phone without getting the good old dictionary translator out to communicate.

Like voice recognition, the technology does have its draw backs which will need ironing out such as different voices, accents and pitch but if the technology is integrated into mobile phones then the possibilities could be endless.

Google will have a massive job on their hands, however with a few years yet before its possible launch I am pretty sure with the progress in machine translation, advances in voice recognition as well Google Translate being able to translate 52 languages, with Haitian Creole being the latest addition, we will be seeing the possibility to chat to our global neighbours without the language barrier.

Do you think Google’s speech to speech translation is a good idea or are new developments like this going to stagnate our development in learning a new language? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think…