NICK BOOTH TECH TALK
Nick Booth, editor of www.mobileb2b.co.uk, had builder trouble with his home – and his website. If only he’d used these translation services…
TOO tired to text? All thumbed out? Are you one of life’s great dictators? There are all kinds of gizmos that claim to translate your words into prose. But how “egg curate” are they at taking your dictation?
NUANCE
If you’re one of life’s mobile shouters, you’ll love the new software from Nuance. Even if your contact has asked you to text your proposal to them, you can still let the entire train know about the prestigious project, as Nuance’s Dragon app turns your Blackberry or iPhone into a secretary who writes out your dictation as a text.
Install Dragon on your laptop, and you can dictate your entire CV and have it translated into a well laid out word document. You might have to speak in an American accent.
Other time savers: Vlingo.com’s app lets you shout instructions at your mobile (rather than endlessly explore menus with your thumb) and Parrot.com’s software will read out all your messages while you’re driving.
www.nuance.com
SPINVOX
On the other hand, the SpinVox service sometimes uses humans to type out your missed phone messages and text them to you. A brilliant time saver, well worth a fiver a month, as long as you don’t mind the possibility of a man in Bangalore listening in to your calls.
www.spinvox.com
ALS
Remote foreigners can be incredibly useful, especially if you’re dealing with a web or house builder who doesn’t speak English. Auto web translation systems only add to the confusion (as the state of my home extension or “perestroika” will testify). A subscription to ALS allows you to set up a three-way conversation on your mobile (you, a translator and the Ukrainian builder who told you he was Polish) instantly.
www.appliedlanguage.com
ABBYY
If, as for me, fluency in Russian is a lie on your CV that’s come back to haunt you, there’s another life saver. When your boss expects you to translate the menu in Nikita’s, simply run FotoTranslate on your mobile. Take a picture of the Cyrillic text, and the clever software translates it for you. Works in all languages. Speciba!
www.abbyy.com
AIRSCRIPT
Organising a conference for international delegates is another expensive nightmare. You won’t need to hire all those translators if Airscript does its job. Give all the foreigners one of Airscript’s wireless handsets and they can read all the speeches in their mother tongue.
www.cambridgeconsultants.com