Google already runs a successful online translator, Google Translate, but they've got far-loftier ideas than simply converting the written word. They want to translate languages spoken over the phone, according to their head of translation services.

Speaking to The Times, Franz Och, Google's head of translation services, said:

"We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years' time.

Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on.

If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently."

It's not really clear as to whether Google wants to translate a phone conversation, or conversation around you (for example, ordering food in a Japanese restaurant). If it's the former, I'm unsure as to whether I'd actually use the software, although booking hotels in other countries might be one example.

But then, when everything's done online these days—and effective online translation services like Google Translate and Babel Fish exist—Google might find that by the time they launch translation software on a phone (presumably Android), it's too late and everyone can speak English by then anyway. I hope that's not the case, though. [The Times]

• It's based on Android 2.1. The build currently being circulated is identified as 2.1 version 1, mirroring the update just pushed to the Nexus One last week.
• Google Goggles is now pre-installed (no matter how unhelpful it may be).
• The browser's now multitouch enabled, just like Google Maps 3.4. Huzzah! No Flash, but then again, we weren't really expecting that.
• Interestingly, the home screen's still got the same look as 2.0.1, meaning it doesn't adopt the Nexus One's rotating 3D grid of app icons -- it's still got the pull-up drawer tab at the bottom.
• No active wallpapers. Bummer!
• The news and weather widgets introduced on the Nexus One are included. Maybe certain capabilities of 2.1 are going to be restricted to devices with minimum performance benchmarks?

Motorola Droid's next update to be Android 2.1, includes multitouch browser originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A British doctor was so kind as to write a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, handily summarizing what is known about Nintendo-related injuries. The gist: Your Wii wants you dead.

The point of the letter was to highlight a new case, in which a girl hurt her foot playing Wii Fit. But in the process, it provides a tidy little history of ways people have managed to injure themselves playing video games.

• Nintendinitis: This is the classic videogame injury, and one you've probably heard of before. This is a repetitive stress injury in the "extensor tendon of [the] thumb," which you can get from pretty much any game console.

• Wiiitis: Sounds like something a lot of people have probably just slept off:

A healthy 29-year-old medical resident awoke one Sunday morning with intense pain in the right shoulder. He did not recall any recent injuries or trauma and had not participated in any sports or physical exercise recently. He consulted a rheumatology colleague. The Patte's test was positive, consistent with acute tendonitis isolated to the right infraspinatus.

After just a day with the Wii, this kid was out of commission for a week. What does Nintendo have against healthy tendons?

• Traumatic Hemothorax: If this sounds terrifying, you probably did well in Latin class. Doctors have apparently documented the cavities around patients' lungs filling with blood after Wii-related falls. This can kill you.

• Dislocations: This one is the most predictable of the lot, since honestly, who hasn't gotten carried away trying to Happy-Gilmore-bowl their way through Wii Sports? And anyway, fake sport/real injury humor is universal.

• Head Injuries: Wiimote straps may save your HDTV, but they won't save your kid sister from getting clocked in the skull while you're playing Zelda.

• Wii Fracture: This is the new one:

In the United Kingdom, a healthy 14-year-old girl presented to the emergency department at Horton General Hospital in Banbury (near Oxford), having sustained an injury to her right foot with associated difficulty in mobilization. She had been playing on her Wii Fit balance board and had fallen off, sustaining an inversion injury.

Apparently, rolling your foot off the side of the balance board—which, really, anyone who's played Wii Fit ha
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Nook now in stock online and in stores, with new 'More In Store' content originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.