It’s time for another edition of the Speech Tech blog’s regular feature, “Crushes & Hexes.” Appearing every Wednesday, we highlight companies, places, technologies, or people we deem praise-worthy, or cringe-inducing within the speech/tech/IT world. As always, your feedback is appreciated! Email us at blog@speechtechblog.com if you have a crush or hex item you’d like to see online.

Crush: Speech Tech Pro Translates The Four Questions
Why We’re Loving It: Murray Spiegel and Rickey Stein, friends who met at New Jersey’s Kol Dodi community choir, have translated the four questions of Passover into 300 languages. [That's 1200 questions...but I'm bad at math.] The story of how the two met and formulated the idea is even more endearing:

“[The two] might never have discovered how much they had in common if Stein had not overheard Spiegel talking about translating the Four Questions into Klingon during a rehearsal break.”

Spiegel, who works in the speech technology field, co-authored the book 300 Ways to Ask the Four Questions with Stein. And with Passover coming up (11 days, people!), the book should make a nice addition to anyone’s seder. The book sells for $39.95, and comes with a CD and DVD. And this passage from the previously linked article further indicates why Stein and Spiegel are so awesome:

…[T]he emphasis is on the link between culture and language. For example: How do you translate “leavening” into Gujarati (India) when the language has no word for “yeast,” or into Polish, which has five synonyms for “leavening”?

Hex: Mobile Phones…on Airplanes. Seriously? Why?
Why We’re Hating: Have you ever flown from New York to Florida? Minneapolis to Los Angeles? Anywhere? Great. The actual experience of flying is painful enough [delays, non-edible food, flat soda, movies like I Am Legend], and airlines are about to make it a lot less tolerable. In Europe, officials are beginning a testing phase that would let fliers talk on their mobile phones during flights. Great. Just great. Not only do I have to hang out with screaming babies, but now I get to hear the businessman next to me yelling at some poor secretary, and the 15-year-old boy talking to his girlfriend for three hours (”Baby, I love you…and my retainer…”) And who would I be? That 23-year-old that makes everyone listen to my L’il Mama “Lip Gloss” ring tone every time I get a call. AND, can you imagine if these phones were speech-enabled?! That opens up a whole other can of worms — “I SAID I WANT TO GO TO YAHOO.COM!!!!!” But, if you’re in the U.S., don’t fret. So far France is one of the only countries offering the service.

[Photos from DylanGreene & CartoonStock]