missThe two blind graders disagreed (A: miss, B: partial). A third agent settled it (D20).
Grader A: miss
Real-time spoken translation was not in common use in 2009. Google Translate added an experimental conversation mode only in January 2011 (English-Spanish at first), and it used statistical translation with poor grammatical accuracy until 2016.
Test: At least 20% of hearing people commonly using real-time speech translation: under 5% in 2009 and 2014.
Google Translate (Wikipedia) (retrieved 2026-09): Experimental conversation mode appeared in January 2011; statistical MT with poor grammatical accuracy until November 2016.
Grader B: partial
Google Translate added speech translation in 2010 and Conversation Mode in 2011, so the capability appeared in the 2010-2012 window, but it was limited in languages and was not commonly used as a real-time listening translator.
Test: Share test: speech translation available 2011 on phones; routine use well below 20% by 2014, likely above 5% of smartphone users trying it.
Wikipedia: Google Translate (accessed 2026-09-28): Speech translation April 2010; Conversation Mode Jan 2011 (English-Spanish only); camera sign translation 2015; no phone-call translation.
All captured fields
rank
55
kind
decade_prediction
section
Disabilities
subject
Real-time language translation
target year
2009
timing
in
position
Chapter 9, "2009"; item Disabilities 8 in Kurzweil 2010, p. 47
confidence
high
note
Wording as reproduced by the author in "How My Predictions Are Faring" (2010); book page not given there. Subject label is the essay's own item heading.