With Android, Chrome OS their search offering, Google is fast creating a device like the guide book in Hitchhikers Guide th the Galaxy. How long before the create an ebook/tablet device of their own?

They have also just taken another step towards the babelfish device. The Bablefish translated all languages. Google has speach to text via the iPhone spoken search, they also have real time language translation. The last step would be text to speach, which I'm sure they could easily arrange.

Given a few more years of hardware advances, and more refining of their current technologies, how long before a Google device is able to convert English to German as I talk?

Welcome to the future, it's Googletastic!