Objects that, by cloning our voice, make us speak in unknown languages; earphones that turn into simultaneous translators; App that make other idioms learn with the ease of a video game … so technology helps us communicate with the world. Practically effortless
Nobody likes to look like a robot, let alone express themselves like one of them. Still, it is the alienating effect that is felt by turning on an automatic translator, one of those gadgets that recognize our words and transform them into an unknown or not very familiar language.
They start blaming with an electronic tone, allowing us to communicate with a foreign person or make us understand in a distant country.
Something, however, is changing. We no longer have to feel the bad policy copy of Siri or Alexa. An object has arrived on the market which, thanks to artificial intelligence, does not use a stamp and a standard shade and capture our voice, unique as a digital imprint, and reproduces it in a faithful way. The clone.
It makes us remain, appropriating a piece of our individuality. Enriched it, in exchange, of a talkative electronic crutch.
The gadget is called Translator Q1 and is produced by the Polish company Vasco, veteran in the hi-tech interpreter sector. “This innovation makes the conversations more natural than ever”, the CEO Maciej Góralski exults, who carries on the company inspired by a teaching of Nelson Mandela: «If you talk to a person in a language understandable to her, you will arrive at her head. If you talk to her in her mother tongue, you will arrive in her heart ».
Difficult to do wrong to the former president of South Africa. Because many today chew a standardized, basic, simplified English English which is also a sentence of poor conversations, with poor depth. It is like targeting wings to one’s verbal creativity, imprisoning it in a restricted vocabulary. The translator opens the fence, brings out the lexicon from the cage.
We are in front of a technological turning point which, without exaggerating, is of biblical scope. Thanks to devices of this type, together with Intelligentoni earphones that are transformed into diligent and invisible interpreters, to the smartphones that scrutinize and listen to the surrounding world and, if needed, they bring it back to auditory and visual family codes, the chaos of incommunicability is lost.
The tower of Babel collapses, or rather it is covered by a veil that makes it invisible, identical to that used by the illusionists to rush the public with a magic makeup. Because all the planet, albeit through a digital filter, can return to understanding himself without misunderstandings and exhausting complexity.
A little patience is needed, the time that the machine deciphens a dialogue and translates it. An almost immediate process, or little we are missing.
The cloning function of the translator Q1 has been baptized “Vasco My Voice”, is available in 54 languages, does not require manual interventions: he immediately recognizes the origin of his interlocutor and puts himself at work. So there is no risk of exchanging a Japanese for a Korean, starting the chat with a gaffe.
The product has an integrated SIM, which gives free and unlimited access to the network in about 200 countries: it means that you must not move to chase Wi-Fi networks. And it is effective not only in presence: “Another big news” observes Góralski “is the simultaneous translation during telephone calls. We can thus communicate without linguistic barriers, for example with the owner of an accommodation or in the event of an emergency ».
To want to be pragmatic, buying an ad hoc object is not really necessary, unless it is used for prolonged use, for study or work reasons. On the other hand, most cell phones already have programs on board that translate long phrases in an acceptable way.
Not everyone shines by accuracy, they stain themselves with coarse misunderstandings and after a while, it is true, you end up losing patience, but for an essential exchange they are more than enough.
As Google Lens or its advanced version, Gemini Live is: just frame a restaurant menu or a sign written in characters indecipherable for us and the software identifies the tongue and superimposes the translation directly on the display.
Abroad, in order not to order a dish with a murderous spiciness or not dive into a river frequented by crocodiles, it can be useful.
Soon, moreover, such information will become at the glance: the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses have just been revealed, with a transparent screen installed directly in the right lens. They create live subtitles in Italian of what marks a foreign interlocutor or translate notices and surroundings.
And who, despite this abundance of shortcuts, still wants to learn a language, has the opportunity to do it before and better, always thanks to technology.
Applications such as Duolingo transform learning into a video game full of irony, while others, for example Babbel, allow you to win the shyness to interact with a teacher or other students: it dialogues with a computer that, thanks to the usual artificial intelligence, assigns tasks, recognizes what we are saying, evaluates the progress made.
Sometimes a car that speaks with us can be more useful, rather than one that speaks like us.
