Google is actively working on its newest innovative product: Moonshots. A voice-enabled universal translation system, Moonshots is Google’s attempt to eliminate language barriers. (Hello, Star Trek Universal Translator!)

As of now, many people use Google’s Translate service that can translate several languages for the web (a go-to stopgap for reading foreign language web pages or writing comments.) In addition, Google is already working on a voice-enabled translator smartphone app that can translate roughly 24 different languages so far.

Over the years, Google has been making several developments and improvements to its Translate product, which people find quite useful as it was used more than 200 million times last year alone.

Talking about Moonshots’ progress, Franz Josef Och, who leads Google’s Translate department, explained that this voice-enabled translator is fairly slow and clunky right now but he points to improvements in Google’s text-based Translation service over the years and projects that the app will grow by similar leaps and bounds. The biggest barriers remain nailing down the more subtle nuances of language such as syntax and ambiguity.

While Google is working on its Moonshots project, Microsoft is also quite active on bringing Star Trek’s “Universal Translator” to life. Recently, Microsoft researchers demonstrated a software that translates spoken English into spoken Chinese almost instantly, while preserving the unique cadence of the speaker’s voice—a trick that could make conversation more effective and personal.

Talking about the Voice translator, Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s Chief Research Officer said,

“What I’ve seen is some combination of excitement, astonishment, and optimism about the future that the technology could bring. We don’t yet know the limits on accuracy of this technology—it is really too new. As we continue to ’train’ the system with more data, it appears to do better and better.”

Such a tool that could translate on-the-fly (with minimal error) could revolutionize cross-cultural communication, especially if it could be used reliably in person. Of course, over-the-wire it would be even better (because it could intercept the call and translate.) There would certainly be a market for media players–for foreign movie buffs or anime watchers.

However, really the human communication aspect of these projects is difficult to overhype too much. The technology is still in its infancy, but with the proper understanding between two parties (that translation is rarely perfect and idioms will probably not sound right) it could greatly ease cross-language conversations both both personal and business alike.