"Introducing the ili" - A new device to help close language gaps in The Bay

View fullsize

By Charles A. Turner Jr.

Have you ever wanted to communicate with someone but didn’t speak his or her language? Odds are, if you’ve grown up or lived in the diverse Bay Area, then you have.

Most of the time the only ways for two people who speak a different language to verbally communicate and understand one another is by one of them learning the other person’s language or by having someone interpret for them.  But one problem that comes from taking classes to learn a language is that they often teach you how to speak the language formally but not the way that the language is spoken in less formal situations.  However, this was before the debut of ili. Ili, the world’s first wearable translator makes communicating with people who speak different languages simple and easy.

The ili is so easy to use that all someone needs to do is press the button on the device to activate it, talk into it, and ili translates what you’ve said into the desired language.

Ili, which is owned and developed by Logbar Inc. is a 2016 CES Innovation Awards Honoree and is designed for travelers and businessmen. It currently only supports the languages English, Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese) but the company plans to support more languages such as French, Spanish, Thai, and Arabic when they release newer versions of the device soon. The company claims that ili’s speaker is powerful enough to be heard over background noise so hearing the translations should not be a problem.

The ili does not need Wi-Fi or an internet connection to work and can be worn around the neck for easy access. The ili also comes with a “revolutionary dock system” that connects the device to the internet so that it can connect to the cloud and stay up to date with any changes in terms or slang that is spoken among its stored languages. Ili is currently only available for businesses which work in the travel industry or those that deal with a lot of people daily who speak different languages such as transportation agencies, amusement parks, car rental agencies and hotels.  

To learn more about ili or to find out how you can own one, you can visit their website at iamili.com.