Launching today
Voca Vela
Helps you adapt in a new country
15 followers
Helps you adapt in a new country
15 followers
Moved to a new country and don't speak the language? Voca Vela translates live conversations both ways, so you and the person in front of you can just talk and hear the translation out loud. It also reads signs, menus, documents and labels through your camera, does quick text translations, and dubs video. There's a practice mode to rehearse a conversation before you have it, but the translation is what helps you from day one. Thirty nine languages, free to start.
I moved to Portugal with my wife, and two dogs. No plan, no preparations, no time to learn the language. We were just fleeing the war in Ukraine.
The situation forced us to adapt fast, and the language barrier was the biggest challenge. We tried a lot of translation apps, but none of them were actually built for real-life situations. No shop owner is going to wait while you get your question right in ChatGPT or Google Translate. And Google Translate would often change the meaning of what I just said and leave me standing there feeling awkward.
That's when I decided to build a prototype, and tried the live translation models from OpenAI and Microsoft. It was already a big step up, but the audio in cafés, shops and offices is never clean, and in those conditions the models just stopped producing anything useful.
So what we have now is a completely custom voice translation pipeline, built to keep both the transcription and the translation contextually correct, and to generate it in real time while you're standing right there. We use the app every single day now. It doesn't just help us in conversations everywhere we go. I've also noticed that I'm starting to remember Portuguese patterns on my own, without taking a single lesson.
If you've ever had to land somewhere new without the language, I'd really love to hear what was hardest for you.
@theicreator I have tried the product for an home, land lord casual discussion using Romanian and English and the application performed as expected with fast interactivity and guidance. One small observation the selects for the languages have poor contrast between font color and background color making language selection really hard. I have created also an account using Google Sign In and the account creation works also as expected. To answer your question I have landed in Italy, Germany and Poland each time having specific issues; I have used books way back in 2010 in Italy and websites like Google translate. Later software like Duolingo. Your application really looks forward.
@andrei_constantin_alexandru I appreciate the feedback very much. Even though the roadmap is full, we still need to get the basics right. The current goal of this app is to help you learn language patterns naturally through real interactions and support you on the spot. For me personally, there is already so much cognitive load that taking weekly language courses is already one of a challenge.
39 languages is wild, and the live two-way translation actually felt natural when I tested it with my phone in front of me. The camera sign reading is a nice extra.