Google is believed to be working on technology that will turn mobile phones into portable translation tools.
If the technology comes into fruition, it could be a boon for both business users and consumers alike who need to communicate more effectively while on holiday or collaborate with colleagues from other geographies.
"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time," Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
"Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on."
Google last week also confirmed another translation milestone. Haitian Creole translation has been added to Google Translate, with hopes that it will help current relief efforts in Haiti.
"We've now added Haitian Creole (kreyl ayisyen) translation to Google Translate, so that you can translate between Creole and 51 other languages, and also hear spoken versions of Creole translations," the company stated in its official blog.
"While this translation system is still evolving (when translating to/from Creole, English performs better than other languages), we hope it will help relief volunteers communicate better with Haitian earthquake victims, and serve as a useful resource for people in Haiti and elsewhere."
