Alternatives to Apple’s Live Translation: four devices
On September 9, 2025, at the “Awe Dropping” event, Apple unveiled the Live Translation feature. It relies on Apple Intelligence, the built-in AI, and can facilitate conversations in English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, with Chinese (Mandarin, both simplified and traditional), Japanese, Korean, and Italian promised later this year. The setup works as follows: AirPods pick up the speech, send it to the paired iPhone, the Translate app there does what it’s supposed to do, and sends the bit in the user’s language back to the AirPods. For a two-way conversation in case the other party doesn’t have a translator device, Live Translation can voice the user’s reply in that party’s language from the iPhone speaker.
Are there alternatives out there for those who are not in the Apple ecosystem? Here are four of them.
Pocketalk S Plus
Pocketalk is one of the leaders in the field of portable translation devices. Its S Plus model is a compact, cloud-powered translator that speaks 82 languages. The product is quite mature: the first Pocketalk was brought to the market in 2018, and it has been evolving ever since.
A bidirectional conversation involves the parties passing the device to each other for each iteration. For texts, it has a large touchscreen, but what’s more interesting is the camera and the translator’s knowledge of sign language. Talk about removing the barriers.
There are various Pocketalk bundles available on the official website, with the price, as of this writing, ranging from $299.95 to $409.95. Every bundle includes a global SIM that ensures connectivity in 130+ countries.
Timekettle earbud translators
Want a more seamless experience, akin to that enabled by the Babel Fish in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Try Timekettle’s earbud translators, translation tools that make natural two-way conversations possible without any device being passed around. A kit includes two buds, one for each party; once in the ear, they let you just speak, with the app taking care of the translation and routing the audio streams into respective earbuds.
When connected to the Internet, Timekettle’s products support 40+ languages and 90+ accents, and the number is growing constantly. Offline, the systems can do 13 major languages, which makes it indispensable in the vast majority of situations. At the official website, the regular prices for different models vary from $149 to $449.
Vasco translators
Vasco Electronics has a bunch of recognized translator models catering to various target audiences. At the top shelf, there is Vasco Translator V4, the most feature-rich model, a device with a touchscreen and lifetime internet connectivity for translations in nearly 200 countries. The device for the mass market is Vasco Translator E1, a pair of earbuds that are easy to use and enable a seamless natural bidirectional conversation, but lack functionality when not connected to a boxed Vasco translator or a smartphone.
For any model, the number of supported languages exceeds one hundred; some have been designed with extreme conditions in mind and have rugged waterproof casing. The prices at the Vasco translator website vary from around $300 to $400.
Langogo pocket AI translators
Langogo positions its products, Langogo Summit and Langogo Genesis, as handy devices that can do more than just translate. Indeed, they are capable of recording and transcribing conversations, and double as wi-fi hotspots. Moreover, inside each of them lives Yuri, the AI assistant that can tell weather, exchange rates, and answer questions people usually have while travelling.
As for the translation process, a bidirectional conversation involves passing the device around, and for groups, there is a special mode that allows all parties to speak and be heard. Plus, the devices have a stylus and a touchscreen, handy when you need to use written text instead of spoken words. The prices generally vary from $100 to $300.
Need help with foreign languages right on your computer? Here’s the link to the Translation section of the Informer catalogue:
