Courtesy of: www.belugalinguistics.com

Did reality really catch up with science fiction?

Hey, you may not buy into the whole „life is stranger than fiction“-concept and maybe just think „well all of the Sci-Fi stuff is cute“, but ultimately it’s just that: Fiction. Well, maybe not.

Una Titz
Una Titz
Aug 26, 2017 · 4 min read

We are here to tell you about how future technologies are getting a lot closer to science fiction than people think. Most probably because their inventors are huge geeks, but also because of the visionary quality of Science Fiction.
As humans we like to imagine a lone professor tirelessly slaving away in a darkened lab, surrounded by Tesla coils and mysterious potions. Well, I exaggerate, more something like a misunderstood innovator working in a research lab trying to solve the world’s problems with one great invention. When in fact a bunch of the most outstanding novel ideas came from geeks who had virtually nothing to do with actual science and tech, but who had the vision and passion of dreaming of distant worlds, without being constrained by reality.

The Real life Babel Fish

Every once so often a device surfaces promising to become a „real life Babel Fish“. But do these devices offer a realistic means of communication?
You probably know all about the must-have items of every interstellar traveler, a towel, and a Babel Fish ( from Douglas Adams’ novel: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. 1979).The second you place it in your ear and it magically translates all and every language spoken in the vastness of the charted universe as we know it. Imagine not only being able to translate horrible Vogonian poetry but help us humans within the confines of our own planet. It would make all our travels and journeys less scary and well let’s face it — it could probably put a lot of people out of business.

Well, the TimeKettle piece promises just that. No, not to put people out of business, but to make lost in translation moments a thing of the past. Their newly developed earpieces offer instant communication through earplugs. Granted that both people need to use one and that as of today it „only“ speaks 5 languages. The downside is that plugging the pieces into your lughole, won’t make up for the awkward silences, between spoken and translated word. Meaning you have to stare at your conversation partner patiently for 2–3 seconds (heck of a long time for a conversation pause if you ask me) while the pod is translating. TimeKettle promises instantaneous, hassle-free translation, by picking up spoken word and automatically translating it.

Another example of alien technology becoming real and well somewhat affordable is the less noticeable Bluetooth plug from Waverly Labs called Pilot. The interesting thing about it is its huuuge success on Indiegogo and savvy use of technology. Pilot uses the latest gimmicks in speech recognition, machine translation, and wearable tech while working offline.

And finally the last wearable Babel Fish device is called Lingmo Translate One2One and it promises just about everything its contenders do but looks more like tech stemming from the set of BBC’s production of Hitchhikers Guide from the 80’s. It also operates fully autonomous without a Wifi or Bluetooth, being the only one of the 3 which relies on a built in AI.

All of these devices mean to illustrate how science-fiction is a key inspiration for unique real tech. How Science fiction is becoming less fiction and more of a technique of future prediction, which has an instant and inherent influencer function to itself. It’s enabling a dialogue by asking bluntly what if? Ultimately, in my opinion, Science fiction may become a tool for shaping the way we think and talk. So, whenever you pick up Hitchhikers guide through the Galaxy again, pay close attention to what it says, because who knows — maybe it’s going to be the next thing in tech.
And because we are such huge Douglas Adams disciples, we’re just going to leave this quote here:

“The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier, but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain which have supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.”

Beluga-team

Weekly publication on topics such as translation, localization, NMT, Machine Learning and of course towels! :)

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Thanks to Beluga

Una Titz

Written by

Una Titz

Beluga-team

Weekly publication on topics such as translation, localization, NMT, Machine Learning and of course towels! :)

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