This Earbud Will Help Translate Your Conversations When You Don't Speak The Same Language

Whether it was Star Trek or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, science fiction has been making us crave an instant, universal translator for years. Something to free us from the toil, time and false starts that come with learning a new language. After all, even the most gifted polyglots will eventually come across a language they don't speak so a device like that could come in handy for everyone.

If all goes well, we may be on our way to finally seeing that dream of instant translation come true. A tech firm called Waverly Labs has successfully crowd-funded a wearable device that appears to be similar to the headphones you see in the UN only without a team of interpreters feeding your language of choice to you.

They're still in testing at the moment, but the results will be revolutionary if they work the way they're supposed to.

COMMENT and tell us about any language barriers you've run into.

This set of earbuds is called the Pilot.

One goes in your ear and the other is worn by the person you're trying to understand. As you each speak your own language, the device relays the translations into each other's ear pieces. 

Since it goes in your ear, the Pilot has been compared to the Babel Fish.

Waverly Labs CEO Andrew Ochea said his device lags more than the fictional fish and cautions against thinking you can just wander the streets of Tokyo without any issues.

For one thing, it will only translate English, French, Spanish and Italian at launch.

More languages will be patched in later, but they'll come at extra cost unless you pre-order.

Those who pre-order will also have a chance to get the Pilot for $129.

Otherwise, it will retail at about $250-$300 and become available in the late fall, though they warn some customers may not get their orders until next spring.

The Pilot also works without any connection to the internet.

So if you need to understand someone in a remote area with no Wi-Fi, the device will work just as well.

Ochea said he created the device to help him understand his French friend.

You can see them converse with it in this video. They have to pause to wait for the voice in the device to translate, but it seems to work pretty well.

Of course, we won't be sure until people actually get to try it.

Ochea also said, "it is only going to work in certain conditions," so there's some reason to wonder what he means by that.

Be sure to COMMENT and let us know how excited you are about real-time translation.