At a couple Interex conferences of years past, HP showed some marketing
(I assume) movies that demonstrated their vision of the future.

The first such movie that I saw (named "1995"?) showed an "agent"
on the PC that responded to voice queries (not like today where
this can happen in a "pre-canned" kind of way).

The other movie showed the technology that could be used in the
event of a disaster.  IIRC, the backdrop for this was that of a
major earthquake hitting L.A.

One of the scenes in this second movie showed an English-speaking-only
emergency worker talking with a Spanish-speaking-only citizen.  Both
spoke their native language into a device similar to a PalmPilot the
size of "standard" paper, and the device played it back in the other's
native tongue.

Along these lines, there is a report today (Thu) on OGrady.com (a site
normally geared towards all things PowerBook) that such on-the-fly
language translation is being undertaken by the United Nations University.

   The United Nations University is introducing a Universal Networking
   Language (UNL), which it plans to unveil at a symposium on 18 November
   in Brussels, Belgium. The technology allows for translation on the fly
   of 16 commonly used Earth languages. Using the technology, a user's
   native language is converted to UNL when transmitting data over the
   internet. When the individual on the receiving end gets the data,
   it is converted into their native tongue. The UNL acts as the
   intermediary translator and acts as Meta-language, similar to
   Star Trek's Universal Translator.

More info can be found at
   http://www.unl.ias.unu.edu/

They're looking for help as well, but the tasks appear a tad daunting:
one is "Codification of human knowledge in UNL and make it accessible
through Internet. (UNL providers Society)."

--Glenn