“Beam me up, Scotty” is a sentence we are not likely to hear in a real-world setting in the next future.
But other features of the well-known sci-fi series Star Trek could be at hand. Such as the real-time remote interpreting programme! Instead of teleporting onto USS Enterprise, all we will have to do a just start a videocall with Skype.
This potentially has all what it takes to be a major turn in the interpreting industry, allowing people speaking different languages to be able to communicate, instantly and from different locations around the world. Or, at least, at a simple undestanding level.
As a matter of fact, Skype translator will have to deal with the issues of all machine translation services. Much depends on how technologically advanced is the real-time translation engine.
One thing is clear: in the next future computer-assisted and machine translation will experience major breakthroughs. Is the industry ready to cope with them?
B. Services 