Facebook to buy speech translator developer Mobile Technologies

Facebook Inc, the world's most popular social-networking service, yesterday agreed to buy Mobile Technologies, a start-up that develops speech-to-speech translation apps.

Both companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

Facebook management director, Tom Stocky wrote in a Facebook blog post that the acquisition is an investment in Facebook's "long-term product roadmap."

"It has always been our mission to make the world more open and connected. Although more than a billion people around the world already use Facebook every month, we are always looking for ways to help connect the rest of the world as well," he added.

Founded in 2001, Pittsburg-based Mobile Technologies has developed a number of cross-lingual communication tools, including Jibbigo, the world's first speech-to-speech translator on a phone that runs online and even off-line, independent from the Internet.

Travellers around the world use Jibbigo to communicate in foreign countries by making a voice recording or type text in one of 25 languages, and then have a translation in a language of user's choice appear immediately on the screen or read out aloud.

Mobile Technologies has also developed the first automatic, simultaneous interpretation service for lectures and deployed it in educational settings.

Facebook currently uses Microsoft's Bing for translating comments and News Feed posts, but having its own translation service could help Facebook users around the world to chat easily in any language.

Mobile Technologies did not say how many of its employees will join Facebook.