It may not be a flying car or personal teleporter, but we're one step close to living in the future as Google announced it's working on a universal translator.

Though working prototypes are still a few years off, Google has shown that it has a handle on some of the basic technologies needed for such a device. You can already translate one web page into another of dozens of languages with Google's help. If you've ever tried the company's free 411 service, you've used its speech recognition technology. Combine those two, add in text-to-speech (arguably the easiest task in the mix), and you've got all the basics for a speech-to-speech translator.

Right now the project is a pipe dream of Google's translation department, but it's nice to get a hint at what sort of tech to expect from the company in coming years. If nothing else, the world of prank phone calls is about to change forever.

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