I’m excited to announce Torre, a new product that translates instantly between Spanish and English. A lot of native English speakers I talk to don’t understand why a better approach to translation is needed, since there have been phone apps around for years. The best way I’ve found to explain is “Can you imagine watching a foreign language movie using Google Translate?”.

I’m an immigrant to the US who was lucky enough to already speak the dominant language, and so I feel like I’ve experienced the whole process on easy mode. When I talk to the children of immigrants from other parts of the world, language brokering for their parents and relatives is a huge part of their lives. Kids end up being thrust into situations like medical appointments, PTA meetings, and legal consultations, often from a young age, and are exposed to aspects of adult life we shouldn’t expect children to deal with. Sometimes professional human translators are theoretically available, but the difficulty of scheduling them, and the awkwardness of alternative phone services, mean that family members are still the most common option.

We’re taking the latest advances in AI language models, and use them to offer a fast and fluent experience, aiming to make a live conversation as easy as watching a movie with subtitles. A lot of the situations that need translation also require privacy, so our tablets run with no internet connection at all, air-gapped so there’s no risk of your data leaving the device.

Initially we’re looking for lawyers, doctors, and educators who want to give Torre a try, since those are some of the roles we think we can be most helpful to. Drop me an email if you’d like to know more. I’d love to hear from you even if you don’t fit those categories, since we’re still learning about all the places Torre could be useful.

To show where we’re at with the product, here’s me and my colleague Jackie doing a live demo in a single take!