Real-time wearable translators put to the test in China – how did they do?
We take the ili from Japan and Hong Kong’s Transay to the border city of Shenzhen to put them through their paces, catching a cab, ordering food, finding an art installation and other travel-related tasks
From the universal translator in Star Trek to C3PO in Star Wars, the ability to speak and understand all languages was once confined to the realms of science fiction. Well, no more.
Last year saw the launch of several real-time translators – from Japan’s ili and the Dutch-designed Travis to Google’s Pixel buds – that promise to break down language barriers and transform the travelling experience. But how do these devices fare in real life?
To find out, we went to Shenzhen, the Chinese city nearest Hong Kong, and put two such translation devices to the test: the ili and Hong Kong innovation Transay.
Developed by Logbar – inventor of the Ring Zero, the first gesture-control wearable cloud control device – the ili verbally translates short spoken English phrases into Mandarin. The Transay, launched last November, offers two-way translation and supports 28 languages and dialects, including Cantonese.
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The ili has a sleek and intuitive design featuring three buttons: a power button, a large home button for recording and a small button on its side to repeat the sentence or switch to another output language. Even the least tech-savvy user could easily operate it without any help.