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Gadget Claims To Fit In Your Ear and Translate Foreign Languages In Real-Time (telegraph.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the just-like-the-movies dept.

An anonymous reader cites a report on the Telegraph about a tiny gadget that lets two people who speak a different language understand each other. The gadget dubbed Pilot translates English, French, Spanish and Italian. Pilot, which is yet to be launched, is priced at $129. From the report: It works by being connected to two different people, speaking two different languages, and translates what they are saying in your ear. Pilot is supposedly the first 'smart earpiece' capable of translating between two languages. Waverly Labs, who have developed the technology, said on their website: "This little wearable uses translation technology to allow two people to speak different languages but still clearly understand each other." They have not said how it works except for that it uses "translation technology" embedded in an app. We have reached out to them to find out more.

5 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. HHGG by fuzznutz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it a babelfish?

  2. Uh, sure by wcrowe · · Score: 5, Funny

    "My hovercraft is full of eels..."

    --
    Proverbs 21:19
  3. Age Old Meme by darkain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1) Google Translate
    2) Bluetooth Headset
    3) PROFIT!

  4. My bullshit detector is going off by gweilo8888 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This one ticks all the boxes:

    * Unknown startup company
    * Huge claims
    * Big PR push
    * IndieGogo campaign

    Smart money says this either ships way late and barely functional, or never ships at all and the creator gets a nice new vacation home in France, Spain or Italy. Translating audio in real time is a fool's errand.

    Pay attention the next time you're dictating using, say, Google's voice recognition, or you're watching automatically-generated closed captions on an unscripted TV show. (Sports commentary is a nice example.) You will *frequently* see the transcription change after the fact, replacing one or more words with others that are totally different.

    If you claim to be transcribing and translating in anything approaching real time, that can't happen. Once you've said the wrong word, you've blown the meaning of the sentence. Correcting it in audio will take time, by which point you've missed (or are lagging further behind) the actual conversation. Or more likely (if this ever reaches market) your conversation is riddled with uncorrected errors and you have barely any understanding of what's actually being said.

    I doubt it will ever even reach this point, though. Chances are good no product ever ships, but the money is taken regardless.

    1. Re:My bullshit detector is going off by Verdatum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would love it if Slashdot had a rule to not bother with articles about companies who are still in the funding phase of their crowdfunding campaign unless the project provides detailed implementation specifics. Granted, /. isn't nearly as bad about this as many other tech reporting sites. But it's still a waste of everyone's time when it happens. And possibly worse, it grows that stupid-ass "AS FEATURED ON" list of logos that these sort of projects looove to use as false-credibility. They might as well call that section "The following websites have recently had slow-news-days and/or employ editors who don't bother to verify the validity of scientific or technical claims"