Translator

Over the years, we've seen a number of experimental "smart" gloves that convert their deaf wearer's hand gestures into text. The aptly named Sign Language Translation Glove, however, is claimed to be the first mass-produced product to do so.

Timekettle's WT2 Plus translation earbuds aim to give you a Babel fish type experience, quietly translating what you're saying into your partner's ear and vice versa. We've been playing with them to see how they stack up against hand-held devices.

The Pocketalk translator is a super-portable Babel fish of a device that allows you to speak to people in up to 74 different languages at the touch of a button. But how does it stand up against the Langogo device we tested recently?

The Langogo Genesis is a hand-held pocket translator, smaller than a smartphone, that uses noise-cancelling microphones to translate between more than 100 languages, while offering you a 4G WiFi hotspot while you're travelling. We've been using one for the last few weeks.

​Not long ago, if you told someone there was a device that allowed your spoken words to instantly be heard in another language, they might not believe you. Well, there are now several such gadgets available, and we recently tried out a unique new model – Misway Technology's Smark two-way translator.

As any new parent will quickly confirm, the sound of a crying baby can communicate a multitude of things, from "I'm hungry", to "I'm in pain". A team at UCLA has now developed an innovative app that can identify when a baby is crying and help decode what they're trying to communicate.

Hospital workers often have their hands full, plus they also often have to communicate with patients who speak other languages. With this in mind, Fujitsu Laboratories has developed what it claims is "the world's first wearable, hands-free speech translation device."

A team from the University of Antwerp is developing a robotic sign language interpreter. The first version of the robot hand, named Project Aslan, is mostly 3D-printed and can translate text into fingerspelling gestures.

Most people don’t understand sign language, to the frustration of those who rely on it to communicate. Now engineers have developed a prototype called “The Language of Glove,” a Bluetooth-enabled, sensor-packed glove that reads the hand gestures of sign language and translates them into text.

Australian start-up, Lingmo International, has brought us one step closer to real-time universal translation. The Translate One2One is set to be the first commercially available translation earpiece that doesn't rely on Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity.

​​It was last year that we first heard about ili, an electronic translator that doesn't require an internet connection in order to work. Now, its makers have taken a step forward by announcing pricing and availability.​

A New York startup claims it's ready to make the fictitious Babel fish a reality; the Pilot earpiece from Waverly Labs sits in your ear and is designed to provide near real-time translations of multilingual conversations.