Emerging Areas of Technology, Part 2, Number 1

1. Universal Translation: A system that is designed to help doctors communicate with patients and which can be extended to other languages and situations.

The ultimate goal is to develop "universal translation" software that gleans meaning from phrases in one language and conveys it in any other language, enabling people from different cultures to communicate.

Unlike commercial systems that translate web documents word by word or work only in specific contexts; such as, travel planning the new software does what's called semantic analysis: it extracts the most likely meaning of text or speech, stores it in terms of concepts like actions and needs, and expresses the same idea in another language.

While these prototypes look promising, making them practical will require more testing and programming.

Eventually, universal translation could make business meetings, document research, and surveillance easier, while opening doors to international commerce and tourism.

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