IEEE Future Directions
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Have you ever dreamt of understanding foreign languages through some magic, invisible device that can whisper the translation in your ears?
Dream no more. Technology has made this possible.
We have got used to read Chinese, Russian, Arabic and Tagalog through our computer, using Google Translate. This is also available on our smartphone, you can even look at text through your smartphone digital camera and see the translation on the screen.
But the real dream is to be able to listen to someone speaking whatever language and hearing that person as if she were speaking your language.
Well that dream is about to come true.
Mymanu’s Click is an earbud that capture a foreign language as it is spoken to you and translate it directly in your ear into your language. The earbuds are produced by Mymanu, a Manchester based company, and contain a chip able to do the heavy work of translation without having to connect to the internet. The chip requires very little power (in comparison to the one you have in your smartphone) and can work for six hours in a row without recharge.
At this time the earbud recognises and translate in 37 languages, and can also provide you with music streamed from different sources (which is good from a marketing viewpoint since there are many more people interested in listening to music than people in need for a real time translation).
Mymanu has been funded through Kickstarter, reaching 413,820$, 113,820$ over what was asked, and is accepting pre-orders now although so far they are, still, in a prototyping phase.
