Was just watching Ray Kurzweil [1] on C-SPAN2 and he mentioned that he was at the Googleplex recently and met with the translation team (see my previous rant here [2]). He pointed out how good their English to/from Farsi translation is, and that, interestingly, they don't have a single person who speaks Farsi on the team! (Farsi is spoken in Iran, Afghanistan etc..)

He also uses the fact that many people, instead of remembering things, rely on Google to be their memory, to emphasize the exponenentiation of technologies. This is in the context of passing the Turing Test (which I personally find to be somewhat childish...) by 2029.

If you can find a transcript of the quite long (~2 hours) episode that would be great. Overall an extremely interesting talk. I definitely recommend it. He covers every imaginable technology.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil
[2] http://blogoscoped.com/forum/14069.html

"Google looks very strong with its business model now, but that's not going to last forever either."

Very interesting. I can't wait until Google releases their in-house translation system. This could be the next big Google milestone after Gmail, Google Images, Google Web Search and others.

Here's C-SPAN's site for the talk [1] and here's the book [2]. Doesn't look like the episode/transcript is made available but you can buy it for 30 bucks if you like =)

[1] http://inside.c-spanarchives.org:8080/cspan/cspan.csp?command=dprogram&record=186919912
[2] http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=The+Singularity+Is+Near%3A+When+Humans+Transcend+Biology&btnG=Search+Froogle&lmode=unknown

subcontract and outsource those bits!