Today Google officially launched its own speech-to-speech translation application for iPhone users to download from Apple’s ITunes store. Did they wait for Verizon Wireless to start offering the iPhone? We’ll never know. Google’s offering is not the first of its kind. I, myself, (looking only at “free” apps for the iPhone) have loaded Trippo(tm) (from Cellictica), Arabic Buddy (Sakhr) and SnapTranslate (powered by Beyo). Each has a point of differentiation such as scanning and reading road signs in non-Arabic alphabets or offering high accuracy in Arabic languages. In the spirit of Recombinant Communications many of them already use the Google Translate API after using their own or a third-party’s speech recognition/transcription resources. Trippo, for instance, employs Nuance’s speech recognition and transcription (Dragon) as well as its text-to-speech synthesis software.

Google uses its own speech recognition/dictation resources as well as Google Translate to perform the transcription and translation operations. It is thought to use SVOX’s text-to-speech rendering software to recite the translated output, although its acquisition of Phonetic Arts leads me to believe that the search giant is getting ready to incorporate its own text-to-speech rendering (probably with a human-sounding voice that conveys emotion.

Does Google’s entry spell the end for competing products? Not necessarily. As Greg Sterling noted in a post on Internet2Go, the “free” Google Navigation application for Android phones barely made a dent in Telenav’s business. The take-away is that creativity and attention to a great user experience is rewarded in the marketplace. Google’s technologies for speech recognition, translation and synthesis will continue to be important resources for its own products and services, but other, product-oriented companies will continue to introduce services that successfully bond with customers, even if they compete directly with the technology that they are employing.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Google, Mobile Translation, mobile speech, Recombinant Communications