Future

     DARPA is hoping to create a speech recognition software that will be able to quickly translate two languages with an accuracy of at least 90%. It is also funding TRANSTAC, which will enable soldiers to communicate with countries that do not speak English. It will still take a while until automatic universal translators can be made, because even for DARPA this is very difficult. This is because of different accents and dialects, the use of slang, and grammatical structures. It is also thought that in about 25 years, computers might be able to understand what we say and reply to us, but some people disagree and say that there will still be 30-50 years before a computer with speech recognition will be as smart as a human and have the same brain capacity. Also, Microsoft is trying to make Windows Vista speech recognition equipped in cars. Later in the future, cars might also be bought equipped with an Ultra Mobile PC, the world's smallest Windows Vista PC, which will be customized for speech recognition. A service called SpinVox receives voice messages in a number of languages and can translate them to you as a text message. The company is working harder to increase the accuracy of SpinVox, which is currently at 97%, and to increase its vocabulary.