C-STAR, is a voluntary international consortium of laboratories around the world that has devoted its energies to removing this final barrier by technology: In each of the consortium's laboratories, systems are under development that translate spoken utterances from one language to another. Will it be possible to converse with friends and associates over the internet without actually speaking their respective languages ? When abroad, will we be able to talk to locals through portable speech translation devices ?

C-STAR is working on making this dream reality.