Microsoft's Translating! Telephone Almost Flawless, Instant Interpreter

Universal communication unhindered by language differences is still a distant dream, but Microsoft's Translating! Telephone, exhibited at this week's Silicon Valley TechFair, brings it a little closer to reality. This VoIP program combines three Microsoft technologies--speech recognition, translation, and text to speech--to create a speech to speech and text to speech translator that's surprisingly accurate.

The translator, which automatically trains itself to recognize your voice, is...