If you’ve ever been irritated beyond belief by people using mobile phones to chat incessantly on buses, trains or even in the cinema, your annoyance could soon become a thing of the past. A German company claims to be in the process of inventing new technology that will allow customers to use their mobile phones to talk to their friends and relatives without making a sound – by lip reading.

Unveiled at German electronics fair Cebit, the device uses the measurement of electrical signals produced by mouth muscles during speech to sense what a person is saying – even if they’re not saying it aloud – and then transmit a synthesized version of the speech to the person on the other end of the conversation.

Professor Tanje Schultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology told BBC News that she was inspired to come up with the idea by her own irritation at people’s use of mobile phones on public transport. “I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting,” she says. “I thought, “I need to change this”.”

Electromyography is the system used for the technology, which is still in its basic state – requiring nine electrodes to be stuck to the face of the user – but Schultz believes it could ultimately end up in mass use via mobile phones. Electromyography is currently used in the diagnosis of nerve damage, though if the technology can be sufficiently refined, it could also assist in the process of instant translation, those who have lost their voice… and make those train journeys a whole lot quieter.