Interpreters may have to pursue alternative careers if a new
translation app starts to gain traction.
The Droid Translator
app -- which runs on both the iOS and Android platforms -- has the potential to
revolutionize personal and business chat by translating your phone, video and
text conversations into 29 different languages.
During a CNNMoney
test interview with creator Alexander Konovalov, the app was clunky.
Nevertheless, it compared favorably in terms of speed with traditional
interpretation, producing only a few translation errors along the way.
Konovalov answered
questions in Russian posed by CNNMoney in English. He said he was inspired to
create the app because he wanted to be able to speak with people all over the
world.
"We want to
create a universal means of communication between people," he said.
Konovalov has a team
of 12 working on developing the technology, including five full-time
programmers.
"Over the next
year, we want to have over 10 million users throughout the world," he
said.
Konovalov's company
TIW Innovations says the app has been downloaded 120,000 times since it was
launched in June.
Droid Translator
competes with a variety of other translation apps and services, such as
iTranslate, but Konovalov says no other service can operate in as many
languages via so many different call formats.
Google Translate can process text and spoken words in 80
languages, but does not have an option to translate voice or video calls.
Comments