Quantum Leap: Universal translator puts an end to language barrier

In Star Trek, the crew of the Enterprise communicates with aliens using a Universal Translator. It basically converts conversations in an alien language into English instantaneously and in the voice of the speaker. Now, this realm of sci-fi may soon become a reality.

Of course, using machines to translate a language isn’t new. However, it was messy and the output lagged. Initially, this system used rule-based translation, where everything was translated based on linguistic
rules. But it had its limitations. The system would often miss the context and make the translation imprecise. Then came statistical machine translation.

Here, rules were based on past statistics that factored in the context as well. And then the output language picked the appropriate word. For example, “park” could refer to parking a car or going to the children’s park.