[ffsm8]

Eh, realistically speaking the camera is it's main selling point. If you want just audio, why not get eg an aftershockz headset. They've been around for over 10 yrs and work very well for that exact usecase (speaker that doesn't block your ears whatsoever)

The translation feature is also available on your phone which you'll need to pull out when using it anyway, because otherwise the other party won't understand what you're saying either...

[com2kid]

Having my main pair of prescription glasses, covered by insurance, also be my Bluetooth headset is super useful.

The camera feature is also really nice for a lot of non-creepy use cases. From translating signs and plaques in front of me w/o pulling out my phone, to taking 1st person videos on amusement park rides, to photos of my son without having to view the world through my phone waiting for just the right shot.

Heck video calls with Grandma where I can chase my son around the house and let Grandma see everything, or when we read books together over video chat.

Meta glasses are great for parents, kids do all sorts of wacky things and I don't want to be one of those parents always waiting with my phone out so I can capture the perfect picture.

[Someone]

> The translation feature is also available on your phone which you'll need to pull out when using it anyway, because otherwise the other party won't understand what you're saying either...

I think a major use case for live translation is one where the other party is standing opposite to you.

[eloisius]

There’s no way this would work, or work more reliably, than the translator apps we have on phones. In order for this Babelfish sci-fi interface to work, the other party has to be aware and pause their speech for the translation. If they can’t hear their translated message they’ll speak over it. Either that or you have some kind of deafening that passes-thru the translated voice in realtime, and then you lose their emotion, emphasis, and tons of other information that doesn’t fit neatly into the standard monolingual worldview of tech.

Even the “conversation mode” built into Google translate or the iPhone app is useless. I can only imagine it working in the sterile environment it was probably designed in: a conference room with two people trying there hardest to make it work.

I live abroad and travel a lot for photography. Whenever I’m using a translator app, it’s typically a chaotic situation like haggling with a taxi driver, a meal with a group of strangers who invited me to eat with them, lots of background noise. The mode that everyone defaults to, without fail, is to use their own phone to speak or type a message and then hold it up in front of their interlocutor’s face. Sometimes they mix in some fragments of English or I know some fragments of their language. It’s lossy but it works.

I can’t imagine a wearable that would perform better. A notepad that can magically translate little messages is about as far as I would want it to go. Tech is pretty awful at intermediating human relations.