SAN FRANCISCO: Sakhr Software continues to capitalize on its merger with Dial Directions, now releasing its spoken Translator for the BlackBerry smartphone. This follows on the translation application becoming first available on the iPhone. The Sakhr Mobile Speech to Speech Arabic Translator for BlackBerry allows English and Arabic speakers to communicate in real-time using a BlackBerry smartphone — speaking sentences in either language, viewing the translation and playing it aloud. Its high accuracy and performance are enabled by Sakhr’s proprietary technologies for speech recognition, machine translation and text-to-speech. Experience it through http://www.sakhrusa.com/demo/speech_to_speech_blackberry
“The Sakhr Mobile Speech to Speech Arabic Translator is very simple in concept, but was very difficult to actually build,” said Adeeb Shanaa, CEO, Sakhr Software. “If you are familiar with the television series ‘Star Trek’ you might remember the Universal Communicator device which allowed people to speak to it in any language and offered real time translation. This is the first tangible product which moves us toward that ideal.”
The technology behind the Sakhr Mobile Speech to Speech Arabic Translator runs using the Internet “cloud.” This means that while a specific type of phone is required to access the technology, it is rather simple to make the translation application available on any mobile platform.
“From that perspective, the heavy lifting is happening in the cloud and building the client interface is relatively straight forward,” commented Shanaa. “That will allow us to easily roll out the technology to other mobile phones in the future. It also allows us to integrate this same technology with devices that aren’t telephones such as onboard navigation devices. Basically any device that has the required connectivity can use Sakhr translation technology.”
Sakhr is targeting two categories of customers — enterprise and consumer. Enterprise includes both businesses and government. For these organizations Sakhr sells the translator as either a service or as a software license, and customized solutions can be created as required. For example, on an oil rig, the server performing the translation would be placed on the rig and the handsets would be accessing the translation services using the rig’s local Wi-Fi network.
Consumers will be offered a more limited version of the product. Shortly, the Sakhr Mobile Speech to Speech Arabic Translator will be available on a monthly subscription through the Apple iStore. Eventually, similar arrangements will be made for the Blackberry and other mobile devices. The consumer version will be hosted by Sakhr on its servers, with the translation going out as data over public cellular networks.
Shanaa believes that the potential for the technology is enormous. While the concept began as a way for the US military to function effectively in Arabic-speaking environments, now the technology can be used to bridge the communication gap between Arabic and English speakers, quickly opening new vistas in tourism, education and business.
