Talkman and other S2S translation (Universal Translator?)

The TALKMAN is inexpensive speech-to-speech translation/game software for the Sony PSP!
This article or review describes the capabilities of the thing.
http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3744&&lsaid=219793
(That site also links to some Japanese TV ads for it, which I haven't seen and haven't bothered to watch. Maybe later.)

Here are some recent reports about DARPA's efforts (to take over the world!)
http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Phraselator,,00.html
http://www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Translator,,00.html
The DOD has wanted US soldiers to be able to carry a portable universal translator for years.
This would give the US military the option of speaking to foreign civilians, reducing the need to shoot them.

Here is a paper by researchers at IBM:
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.uit.innovation.html
They have a Mandarin-English system.

ATT/Bell Labs would like to offer various speech technology services.
http://www.research.att.com/p_rareas.cfm?aid=4

Their "Natural Voices" (=synthetic voices) text-to-speech is here:
http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/faq.php
and will convert text files to audio files. (But... Macs have had TTS, spoken alerts, for 8 or 10 years.)

A short article on natural language processing:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=12257&ch=infotech