The next wave of translation technology

This week we’re taking an in depth look at the newest translation technology and what the future holds.

From the fictional Babel Fish to the best translation apps you could need for traveling. Translation technology is trying to break through the last barrier. Here are two of the biggest new translation technologies on the market. As well as some of the best translation apps for traveling anywhere in the world!

Pilot

This app is a dream come through for every hitchhikers fan. In Douglas Adams famous trilogy of five books, the main character is given a tiny fish to put in his ear which translates all languages of the universe. Now, Andrew Ochoa of Waverly labs has crowd funded the real life version. Pilot is an app that uses an earpiece to listen to the conversation and translates in real time. Additional ear pieces can be purchased. You can also use the app on a phone to translate a whole conversation. Currently the app covers most European languages so far as well as many more.

Panasonic Megaphone

Japan will host the next olympics in three years time, which of course means combating the language barrier. To combat this Panasonic has invented the “Panasonic Megahonyaku”. With three built in languages, this megaphone is already being trialed in japanese airports. The built in smart device on the mega phone comes with 300 built in phrases and has a large enough dictionary that you can create up to 10,000 phrases for any sort of emergency.

Best translation apps

Google translate

Google translate might be funny, but it can be a real godsend if you need to get the gist of what something’s about. You can even translate signs now using your phone’s camera! With the introduction of Neural MT, Google’s quality has really improved, so it’s something you can now really rely on. We’ve even caught some of our foreign team members using it to translate Czech websites they don’t understand 😀

iTranslate

Ever needed to someone to translate what you’re saying? If so, iTranslate is what you need. It translates what you say right after saying it, and supports over 44 languages.

SayHi

Just like iTranslate, SayHi is a voice translator that supports over 90 languages. The only downside is that you have to be connected to the internet to use it, and it’s not available on android yet.

Pixter Scannero

Pixter Scanner is a bit different to most of the other translation apps out there, as it uses OCR (optical character recognition) to translate your documents. You’ll use your phone camera to take a pic of your document then the app goes through it and translates it.

WayGO

If you’re travelling to Asia, and are a bit worried about the different alphabets, this app is here to help. It instantly translates Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters using your smartphones camera.

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