Jibbigo is out with a new speech-to-speech translation application for the iPhone. This time their product is slated to be an instant hit as it involves English on one, and Chinese language on the other side.
Here’s how it works (from the press release):
At the heart of Jibbigo is bi-directional, natural speech-to-speech translation software that lets speakers of two languages converse in their own spoken languages. Jibbigo is not a dictionary or a phrase book, but a speech translator: One person speaks a sentence naturally in English or Chinese into Jibbigo, and Jibbigo speaks the sentence aloud in the other language, much like a personal human interpreter would. Jibbigo also shows the recognition and translation as text on the app screen. Chinese text is shown in Chinese and/or Roman characters. This allows Western users to play back the Chinese speech but also see how the Chinese characters are pronounced.
And since the voice processing is done locally on your device, only the more powerful iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 2nd gen can do the job.
Finally, it’s important to add this isn’t Jibbigo first speech-to-speech app. Their previous work includes English/Japanese and English/Spanish applications, with additional language apps to be released in the future.
Jibbigo English/Chinese ($24.99) [iTunes link]