Think about how flaky translation of written text already is, and then imagine doing a speech-to-text step first.

I strongly suspect this isn't ready for prime time, yet. And I'm guessing the potential for hilarious mishaps is fairly high.

would it be possible to take this same engine and use it for a live sentence by sentence translation of spoken voice conversations on the android, since there the platform is more open? that's a scarily awesome proposition.

You mean, translating a phone conversation? I believe Android's current API doesn't allow you to access phone call audio -- similar to the iPhone, if the article is correct. (A translating app using IP telephony might work, though...)

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/index.html#p...

It is a good effort, but i doubt it will work. This is the professor who is notorious in the academic/funding circles for faking demos, getting fined and so on.