This Earpiece Translates Foreign Languages For You In Real Time

This earpiece is a real smooth talker.

Waverly Labs has created a device called The Pilot System, which translates English, French, Spanish and Italian in real time. This means when someone is speaking to you in any of these languages and you don’t understand what they are saying, all you have to do is put the device in your ear and it’ll translate what that person is saying as they say it. It’s like Babel fish from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy IRL.

The gadget, which will retail for $299, includes a second earpiece, which can be used for wireless music streaming, and a battery charger. The user must also download an app onto their phone in order to toggle languages in the earpiece. Additional downloadable language packs for Slavic, Semitic, Hindi and East Asian languages will also be available.

You can now pre-order The Pilot, but the whole kit and caboodle — meaning the app and device — won’t be available as a complete package until Spring 2017.

The device may merit high demand as well. According to a report published by the Modern Language Association, the number of language enrollments in higher education in the U.S. dropped by 6.7 percent between 2009 and 2013 after increasingly steadily since 1995. Translation? Roughly 100,000 fewer students enrolled in language classes in American colleges.

The Pilot System’s founder and CEO Andrew Ochoa, who speaks English, even has difficulty with a second language and claims that “I came up with the idea for a translator when I met a French girl.”

Guess she must’ve had a certain je ne sais quoi.