A planet without language barriers.

• Position: Worldview - By 2020 - Brief Article

By 2020, we will not need interpreters to communicate with people who speak other languages, according to an expert in artificial intelligence. "A tourist will go through his entire trip in a foreign country talking his own language, and his voice will be instantaneously translated into the local dialect," Sam Lehman-Wilzig, head of the mass communication program at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, told the World Future Society.

Automated translation technology will instantly interpret idiomatic expressions, regional dialects, and the latest slang from scores of languages. Tourists entering a foreign land will receive a miniature translation kit containing a microphone and earphones that will pave the way for universal two-way communication.

A world without language barriers will be different in many ways:

* Tourism will expand dramatically as portable translation devices instantly overcome language obstacles.

* International markets will boom because instructions for complex products...