Two words for this: practical technology! Yesterday, I had come from a get together in a room with over 3,000 people all of whom spoke English, Spanish and the vernacular – Filipino (Philippines). Here’s the thing: the get together was with someone who spoke Italian and very little English.
A week before the get together, the organizers announced that all attendees should bring in mobile phones with FM radio built into the hardware and should tune in during the get together to various stations for English, Spanish and the local dialect real time translations. Here’s another great example of how everyday personal technology can be applied to what could have been a logistical nightmare. Although there were FM radios stationed outside the conference hall, I did notice a great number of folks toting Nokia mobile phones since most of the fairly recent models all have FM radio capability.
So there it was. We were tuned in to a translator giving real time translations to all three languages of the one hour get together.
(Rather funny how during the “test run” the translator would say, “if you hear me, please nod your head” and a sea of 3,000 people would simultaneously nod — how’s that for a flashmob concept!!)
Can You hear Me now? Technology never ceases to amaze Me. I can’t even keep up with it anymore. Wonder what Alexander Graham Bell would think if He could see His telephone now…
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[...] devices used to be costly, now everyone is equipped with a receiver and a room full of people with mobile phones with FM radios can instantly have language translation rather more [...]
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This is perplexing to say the least. You never got in to the details how the FM radio was supposed to do translations? May software? Hardware? This post doesnt seem to answer anything. WTF? were you thinking?
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i did answer. it isn’t software. it’s a guy behind the radio translating as the person was speaking. the FM radio was just a medium.
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