Lexifone 2 Enables Natural Phone Conversations in a Variety of Languages and Dialects
November 18, 2013
People who use different languages but want to communicate with one another have a few options to make that happen. They can learn a new language, call on the services of a human interpreter or use a book or an automated solution like Google Translate. All of the above options can be expensive, time-consuming, clunky, or some combination of the three.
A better option, suggests Ike Sagie, Lexifone founder and CEO, is to use Lexifone 2 – his company’s new phone-based automated, asynchronous language translation service.
Unveiled today, Lexifone 2 offers natural and real-time translation for several major languages and dialects. Those include English (Australian, U.K. and U.S. versions), French (Canadian and European), German, Hebrew, Italian, Mandarin (Chinese and Taiwanese), Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Russian, and Spanish (European and Mexican).
While Lexifone’s original translation service via phone required users to pause between sentences, keep individual utterances to a certain length and push keypad buttons to switch languages based on the speaker at any particular time, Lexifone 2 processes voice as it hits the airwaves and doesn’t require speakers to change their voice patterns or stop to press buttons along the way. Sagie said the service is based on a patented technology that leverages computation linguistics/linguistic optimization.
“Our goal will always be to come closer and closer to translated speech that mimics exactly the way we speak and hear conversation in our native tongue,” said Sagie. “Lexifone 2 is a leap forward in this direction. Nothing like this has ever been available on the market, and we’ll continue to improve its performance and add features.”
The service can be used in consumer or business settings, but Lexifone is targeting its sales and marketing efforts at small businesses and organizations such as government agencies, hotels, importer/exporters, law offices and others. The service is sold through Lexifone’s website and through major telephone companies, which Sagie declined to name.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
