Lexifone allows for translations without paying hundreds of dollars for human interpreters. If perfected, the service's claimed ability to translate spoken conversations would represent a massive leap over free, internet-based services that are typically limited to typing in text.
Itay Sagie, the company's sales chief and the son of its founder, said Lexifone would allow small businesses to "pick up the phone and call Russia or China."
Preliminary tests show, however, that while the service has promise, Lexifone doesn't always offer reliable translations.
The service, which has been available for testing since October last year, was launched formally in the United States this week, and Lexifone plans to devote nearly US$5 million to market it.
Although a phone-based service similar to Lexifone has been offered since November by NTT DoCoMo, that service works only with Japanese, Korean and Putonghua. Lexifone translates between English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Russian and Putonghua. The service costs 15 to 40 cents a minute.