Vasco E1 Translator: Real-time earphone translation

When you love devices the Waverly Labs Ambassador Translator and Pocketalk Plus Voice Translator When I arrived on the scene, the world had taken some of its biggest steps yet toward universal translation technology, all thanks to gadgets that could listen to two people talking and translate the audio in real time, in both directions.

These products only came out four years ago, and the world of real-time language translation has made amazing strides since then. Indeed, we can view devices like these as exotic, useful, but limited. In the case of the Pocketalk device, the portable gadget was only good for two years, and after that, you had to buy a new SIM card for $50 every year. Baby steps.

You can thank advances in artificial intelligence for moving forward: real-time language translation has been a major proving ground for this technology, and I was able to see how far we have come by testing our latest real-time translation device, the Vasco E1 Translator.

Language buds

The design of the Vasco E1 is similar to that of the Waverly Interpreter, taking the form of two over-the-ear headphones designed to be shared between you and another person – someone who speaks a different language. Each earbud comes with a magnetic case, and both snap together (also magnetically) like a triangular sandwich. Only one of the cases has a USB-C charging port, so when the two cases are connected, they charge together. All Vasco earbuds are designed to fit the right ear. Battery life is listed as 3 hours per earbud, with 10 days of standby available. The box also contains its own battery, which is suitable for “multiple charges” for each Vasco.

Photo: Christopher Noll

The idea behind the Vasco Translator E1 is that you put on one earbud, your friend puts on another, and you start speaking in whatever language suits you, while the E1 translates your friend’s voice into your shared language. Up to 10 E1 translators can be paired, making multilingual group conversations possible. A total of 51 languages ​​(by my count) are available in the app, although that includes many regional variations of English, such as the UK, US, India and Australia. Each earbud has a physical volume control, and unlike some translation systems, no subscription is required.

Vasco has done a lot of work to make the translation process as easy as possible, and this has mostly included the Vasco Connect mobile app. To get started, pair each earbud with the app on your phone — it’s a straightforward process — and assign it a name, a color for its little LED (useful for keeping the earbuds upright), and a default language output through its speaker. All this can be changed as needed.

In Earbuds mode, you can tap on the side of the earbud, something like that Star TrekPicard pushes to talk on his badge, pressing a button on the E1 located near your ear. This puts your earbud in talk mode, at which point you’re free to say hello. When a pause is detected, the translation is delivered in a few seconds to the other earbud(s) you’ve paired, in the language the earbud has assigned in the app. The other party can then tap the side of their head to do the same thing, in the opposite direction. So, tap, talk, listen; Click, talk, listen. And on and on.