New Google smart glasses to translate speech in real time

GOOGLE has unveiled smart glasses that translate speech in real time so the wearer can understand someone talking to them in a foreign language.

The spectacles display a text bubble next to the speaker’s face showing the user what language their friend or colleague is speaking in with a live translation, like subtitles.

The glasses, which are still in the prototype stage, have a tiny camera, microphone and micro-sized computer embedded in one side of the frame. Together with a minuscule projector that uses a lens of the glasses as its screen, the gadget is able to hear, process and display its translation.

Introducing the invention at Google’s developer conference on Wednesday, chief executive Sundar Pichai said: “To understand and be understood. That’s what our focus on knowledge and computing is all about.”

In a video released by Google to show how the glasses work, people are shown having conversations while speaking different languages to each other.

Google has not said when the glasses will be available for the public to buy.

The glasses have strong echoes of Google’s Glass product, which was launched a decade ago but later withdrawn. Glass was launched by cofounder Sergey Brin amid a publicity drive featuring Ray-ban and Luxottica among other high-end brands.

In the past, Google Glass has been promoted by its makers as an industrial tool, helping engineers and technicians see how equipment fits together or to see “inside” machinery, in a way similar to a hologram.

Mr Pichai acknowledged previous privacy concerns over Google Glass by saying “it’s important we design in a way that is built for the real world”.

The original Glass provoked a backlash from privacy campaigners shortly after its 2013 public launch in San Francisco. The camera-equipped spectacles allowed its wearers to take pictures and videos as they walked around the city, prompting companies to impose bans on wearing the technology on their premises.

Las Vegas casinos banned the use of Google Glass a year later, citing laws prohibiting public use of recording devices inside licensed gaming venues. The Motion Picture Association of America encouraged cinema owners to ban Glass’s use at film screenings over fears of movie piracy.

Meanwhile, technologists figured out a way of using Google Glass to steal passwords by recording and analysing computer users’ fingertip positions on their keyboards.