The "background noise, thick accents, and quick speech" is actually the most difficult part. Google did not really do anything new. Speech recognition is aroun

The "background noise, thick accents, and quick speech" is actually the most difficult part. Google did not really do anything new. Speech recognition is around for a while, as well as translation engines. Although putting the two technologies on the cell phone makes an impressive demo and good PR, it does not actually solves the problem at a practical level.