In spring 2016, a Brooklyn start-up called Waverly Labs announced the Pilot, a pair of wireless earpieces paired with a smartphone app that promised to translate a conversation almost as it happened. The first languages were English, French, Spanish and Italian, and early backers were offered a pair for $129 ahead of a planned autumn launch. The Pilot did ship, later and at a higher price than first announced, and it helped open a whole category of translation earbuds.
If you are searching for an in-ear device that translates foreign languages in real time, this is the story of one of the first, how it worked, what it could and could not do, and what has happened to the idea since.
What the Pilot promised
Anyone who has tried to order dinner, ask for directions or make a friend in a language they barely speak knows how awkward it can get. Waverly Labs pitched the Pilot as a way around that: put in an earpiece, speak normally and hear the other person in your own language a moment later.
The system was built around two small earpieces. In the original concept, two people could each wear one, so a single set could serve a conversation between a traveller and a local.
Its launch languages were the four that many Western travellers use most, with more planned. Pre-orders opened through the company's website and a crowdfunding campaign, and interest was strong from the start.
The first language set covered English, French, Spanish and Italian, all among the Romance and Germanic languages that early speech-recognition systems handled best. The company said other languages, including Arabic, Greek and Hindi, would follow as paid add-ons.
How the system actually worked
Despite the science-fiction comparisons, the translation did not happen inside the earpiece. The heavy lifting was done by software in the paired phone and online services. As described by the company in 2017:
- Both people downloaded the free Pilot app for iOS or Android and linked their conversation by scanning a matching QR code.
- The speaker's earpiece microphone picked up their words and sent them to the app.
- The app converted speech to text, translated it and sent it to the other phone.
- The listener read the translation on screen or, if they were also wearing Pilot earpieces, heard it spoken aloud.
Battery life was rated at three to four hours, with a charging case to top up the earpieces. They also worked as ordinary wireless earbuds for music and calls. There was always a short delay between speaking and hearing the translation, so conversations tended to take turns rather than flow freely.
The planned retail price grew as the product developed. By 2017 Waverly Labs listed the Pilot at $299 a pair, while the original early-bird offer had been far cheaper.
From pre-orders to shipping
The Pilot's crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo raised close to $4.5 million, and the company reported more than 22,000 units sold on pre-order. Turning that interest into finished hardware took longer than planned. The September 2016 launch date slipped, and in April 2017 the company was talking about a wide release in late summer 2017.
Later company filings give a sense of its reach: Waverly Labs said it sold more than $8 million worth of products to over 30,000 customers between 2016 and 2019. It stopped manufacturing the Pilot in January 2019, and its remaining stock ran out in November 2019.
A real-life babel fish?
Much of the early press compared the Pilot to the babel fish from Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a small yellow creature that, once placed in the ear, lets the wearer understand any language. The image was irresistible, and the earpieces really did sit in the ear, but the comparison oversold the experience.
The babel fish comparison made great headlines. In practice, the Pilot relied on a phone, an app and machine translation, with a lag of a second or more.
According to the company's launch story, its founder, G. Andrew Ochoa, came up with the idea after meeting a French woman and struggling to talk with her. Whatever the exact details, it is a relatable spark for a translation gadget.
The companion app let users choose which languages to translate between. Language selection, conversation pairing and transcripts all lived on the phone rather than in the earpieces.
A demonstration video from the launch was embedded here; it has since been taken down.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
What came after the Pilot
Waverly Labs followed the Pilot with the Ambassador, an over-the-ear interpreter shown at CES in January 2020. It started at $199 a pair, supported 20 languages and 42 dialects, and offered separate modes for listening to a speaker, broadcasting a lecture and two-way conversation with up to four devices linked to one phone. Pre-sales began in 2019 and shipping started in September 2020.
Big technology companies entered the field as well, building live translation into their own earbuds and phones, and today real-time conversation translation is a standard feature on many smartphones. Waverly Labs' web address now forwards to Sorenson's Forum multilingual interpreting service, which suggests the company's technology lives on in a different form.
How good is real-time translation, really?
Machine translation has improved enormously since 2016, mainly thanks to neural networks. Still, it is not the same as a fluent human interpreter. Translation systems struggle with:
- Context and ambiguity. Words with several meanings need common sense to translate correctly.
- Slang, dialects and noise. Colloquial speech, strong accents and busy streets all reduce accuracy.
- Names and specialist terms. Names of people and places can be mistranslated or dropped.
- High-stakes settings. For medical, legal or official matters, a qualified human interpreter is still recommended.
Some practical tips if you plan to use a translation device or app abroad:
- Speak in short, clear sentences and pause between them.
- Download offline language packs before you travel, in case mobile data is patchy.
- Show the other person the screen as well, so they can read the translation and correct you.
- Learn a few polite phrases anyway. A thank-you in the local language goes a long way.
The Pilot did not make language barriers vanish, but it showed that people wanted help in the moment, in their ear, and it pointed the way to the translation features many of us now carry in our pockets.
Sources: Hearing Health Matters: Waverly Labs Pilot (April 2017); Waverly Labs Form 1-K annual report (SEC); Android Central: Waverly Labs Ambassador at CES 2020; Wikipedia: Machine translation; Waverly Labs; original gallery via Bored Panda.
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