Spices of Life

iPhone App Cry Translator for Babies - An iPhone app claims to interpret the significance behind a baby's wails. The Cry Translator utilizes patented technology to evaluate the pitch and time span of the cries and matches them to one of five possible types: sleepy, hungry, stressed, annoyed or bored.

It then points on how to deal with the child according to the type of cry. These five cry has a worldwide scope of applicability to all babies regardless of culture or language according to the creators Pedro Barrera and Luis Meca.

Every baby has an unequaled intonation and pitch, exactly as grown-up people do, according to the app's Spanish developer Biloop Technologic. These inflections integrated with a familiar cry system enable parents/caregivers over time to interpret their baby’s cries.

For example, a stressed cry has a firm brief sound, goes down little by little and then goes up again, while a starving cry is high-pitched and animated. It took six years to create the technology behind the app.

Biloop claims the application has been scientifically verified with an independent third-party assessments in the pediatric department of Clinic Hospital Juaneda Menorca. The application, which takes about 10 seconds to record and evaluate a cry, had over 90 per cent preciseness rate during the clinical tests with 104 infants.

It is presently selling for $9.99 in Apple's iTunes App Store for the US, UK and Spain and is being launched in US last Wednesday.