World’s First Wearable Translator

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

Since the dawn of time man dreamed of overcoming the barriers of language. Our most primal myths warn us of the troubles of disjointed communications. Since God punished man for the presumption of building a tower up to heaven in Babel by confounding speech and making humanity unintelligible to one another, the multitude of languages have brought confusion, misconstruction, and discord. This is about to change.

English has become the lingua franca of the global village. Knowledge of this one language gives an edge to any person wishing to conduct business in the modern world. But many lack this vital skill, and barriers of understanding still remain.

The ili wearable translator is making history by breaking down these barriers. This first-of-its-kind translator is astonishingly simple to use: push a button, and the machine does the translating for you. It needs no internet connection, as the translation engine is built-in to the machine, while the speech synthesis chipset makes the result intelligible to all. To make it extra beneficial, a library of travel lexicon is pre-loaded.

The ili handles English, Chinese, and Japanese conversations for now, but the second generation will include French, Thai, and Korean. The third version should work with Spanish, Italian, and Arabic as well. While this falls considerably short of the roughly 6,500 languages spoken in the world today, by the third generation it should cover the majority of languages most business and defence travellers will need.

This technology offers a great service to all of us, but even a greater service to soldiers, for example, deployed in a foreign place and having to understand and communicate with the locals.

Final pricing details have not been released yet, but the promise is that it will be “affordable.” Pre-orders should open some time this March or April.