A NEW earpiece dubbed The Pilot has been developed by wearable technology company Waverly Labs that helps travelers translate foreign languages in real time.

The device – which will be available for pre-order soon – works with a corresponding mobile phone app and uses speech recognition technology to translate languages on the spot.

In order for the earpiece to work, both parties of a conversation must be plugged in. Each purchase comes with a set of two earpieces, one for each participant.

The earpiece is no bigger than a regular Bluetooth earpiece, and is said to have “potentially huge implications for worldwide communications”.

It also works offline and overseas, which makes it especially handy for frequent and business travelers. Languages must be pre-downloaded via the app for the earpieces to function.

Languages available on the app include English, French, Italian, Hindi, Arabic and Slavic. Other languages will be provided in the future at a premium fee.

Founder Andrew Ochoa said he came up with the idea for the app after meeting a French girl and wanted to communicate with her without language barriers.

For an idea of how the device will work, watch the video below:

Meanwhile, for something a little cheaper, Swiss company ICONSPEAK designed these icon-covered T-shirts for travelers. The shirts are covered in universal icons to indicate needs like water, lodging and WiFi, which wearers can simply point to when approaching a local.

The days of wild hand gesticulations and crude hand signals during travel are coming to an end, it seems.

The post ‘Smart earpiece’ will never have you lost in translation again appeared first on Travel Wire Asia.

Source: travelwireasia.com