LINE Corporation, the company responsible for the popular messaging application, has just introduced its new smart headphones. They are called ‘Mars’, and they are wireless, contain an artificial intelligence system, and allow the simultaneous and automatic translation of what they are saying in another language.
Last October Google presented its headphones with Google Assistant and simultaneous translation, and basically the idea of LINE is to offer an alternative with a more careful design. The translations are delegated to the Papago translator of the company Naver, of which Line is one of its subsidiaries, and which offers one of the biggest Asian alternatives to Google Translator.
Simultaneous translation to ten languages
As we see in the video, the main difference between LINE and Google headphones is in the design. The company’s search engine opted for a headset linked by a cable, while those of the courier company are independent of each other, and connect wirelessly between them and the device. Come on, something very similar to Apple EarPods.
Mars has been developed jointly by NAVER Corporation and its subsidiary LINE Corporation. Its main function is, as we see in the video, the translation in real time. With it they promise that you will be able to have conversations with another person, each one in your language, while the headphones take care of the rest.
As for the languages in which you can translate, the Naver system will offer the possibility to translate simultaneously to 10 languages, including Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian.
But unlike Google, LINE has limited itself to offering all these promises in an advertising video. Therefore, in the absence of a real test that demonstrates their capabilities live remains to be seen to what extent they match those of Google. In any case, it is confirmation that the path undertaken by the search engine company is interesting enough for others to follow in their footsteps.
In addition to this feature, the Mars headset also integrates noise cancellation technology and the Clova artificial intelligence system, which has been jointly developed by Naver and Qualcomm. Therefore, we have the collaboration between a chip manufacturing giant and one of the most important online services companies in South Korea.
About the price we still have no clue, although what we do know is that these headphones will be one of the stars of the upcoming CES 2018 in Las Vegas next January. Presumably, it is therefore at this fair where they show their performance better and begin to give details about its official launch.
