Waverly Labs Ambassador Review: An Effective Translation of Real-Time Languages

A few years ago, I he spent a day at Suntory’s Yamazaki Distillery Outside Kyoto, Japan. There’s a bar at the end of the trail and (pro tip) it’s one of the only places in the world that you can get for paid Suntory whiskeys. When I bought my first glass of whiskey, a couple of Japanese people who had taken me from Tokyo to Shinkansen gestured to me at their table. Through pantomime, one of them offered me a taste of whiskey in his glass, and we finally spent hours tasting spirits and talking about Japanese whiskey through the magic of Google Translate on our phones. It was a stagnant and uncomfortable way to talk, but it was glorious, and it’s still one of the best experiences of my life.

But what if we were actually interviewed by voice? You know, the old fashioned way? So is the promise Ambassador Interpreter, A $ 179 device that aims to finally bring the legendary Babel fish as close to life as ever.

Easy to talk to

The interpreter arrives as a pair of earphones, one for your right ear and the other for your friend. You download the Ambassador mobile app, which does all the translation work, and pair the two headphones with your phone via Bluetooth.

The ambassador has three operational modes. Conversation mode is a two-way system: you both choose one of the 20 available languages ​​and 42 dialects, and the app makes your own language and yours its own. (Up to four people can speak at a time through the app if they have enough headphones.) The talk mode is a one-way system that translates your speech and transmits it in another language through your phone’s speakerphone. The listening mode goes the other way, listening to the language of your choice, translating it into your language, and entering the headset.

The good news is that both Converse and Lecture work amazingly well. While it can be a little inconvenient to use the Ambassador app, especially when you turn off the headphones when you turn them off manually, it’s intuitive enough to get things going without having a lot of hands. It is not an application to use in a hurry, as you have to select the languages ​​to listen and translate manually, as it takes some time. (You can also set whether you want to hear a male or female voice translation.)

Once everything is settled, and you are convinced that after convincing the other party in Interview mode that you are not erotic by wanting to put on a single headset, you can start the conversation. It can be interrupted for a while, as the ambassador is not always by default. You need to tap the side of the device to tell it to return, and using two of them turns it into a walkie-talkie operation. In other ways, the button will be activated until you press it again. Volume buttons are also available on the side of each headset.

We chat

As you can imagine, the translations are far from perfect, but if you speak clearly and reasonably slowly, the system works very well. He struggles with some proper names, but handles them with slang and informal speech (like “I’ll get them”) in a fairly simple way. The app keeps a record of everything in the text, so if you hear something you said wrong, you’ll be able to correct things. Keep in mind that in a two-way conversation you have to have a pretty close and personal thing to make things work, and that can be a little challenging in our pandemic situation, but I’ve found that the ambassador works well under the mask.

I had high hopes that in Listening mode, I would be able to watch foreign films in the original language, but that didn’t come to a head. Among other things, while I was able to get a fair translation News in slow Spanish, the talk on regular programming and film was always very quick for the ambassador to follow. For the most part the system didn’t catch any conversation, or if so, it was just a random word here or there. If you are facing music or special effects, forget it. (I also had to turn up the volume on the TV and sit a few feet away from it to work without slow, clean speech).

I’m not in love with hardware either. The egg-shaped device is awkward to hold, and I’ve seen it constantly come out of my hand trying to wear it. Reaching the ear, it gives you leg bumps, and it didn’t feel safe enough to use while you’re moving. The headphones are charged via a Micro-USB cable and while the six-hour battery is promised, I returned to the ambassadors more than once, seeing that they were both empty to zero, even when they weren’t used. for a moment. It seems that some work is well done in battery management.

In the end the concept is a winner; if some practical kink can be practiced, it will be a great product. For now, if all parties are willing to take their time, arguably the most effective method of obstructing language barriers is to have a human translator available for the job. And to that, I say bell!