Blink An You’ve Missed New Translation Product
I know technology moves fast these days but have you ever heard of a product selling out within 16 days of its launch and not being produced again?
That appears to be the fate of the Lingmo Translate One2One, which has been superseded by their Time2Translate. One might assume, then, that the products were similar.
In reality, the first was an earpiece and the new product a smartwatch!
What they had in common, as Lingmo are acknowledged specialists in translation, was converting real-time conversation between several common languages.
For participants in a discussion to talk in their different tongues to a single wrist borne device is probably a more elegant solution than them wearing connected earpieces.
However, the new Time2Translate, at £312, shipping in four to six weeks of online order, looks good value for the very frequent traveller.
For the more modest budget, Lingmo’s most successful product in volume terms is a smartphone translation app.
This facilitates two-way conversation, translating to and from English in many more languages than each of those more sophisticated products has been loaded with.
It is available for iPhone and Android at only around a fiver.
Why then would anyone spend bug money on expensive watch-based translation when they can whip out a general purpose mobile phone to do the same job for next to nothing?
Lingmo would undoubtedly say that the underlying IBM Watson AI engine in the smartwatch makes it more accurate and also handles dialects better.
Thus, Time2Translate may be attractive for those who travel widely for overseas business and have cash to burn.
For mere holiday travellers, Lingmo’s app looks very good value for money.
