Whilst on holiday, childhood friends David Barnett and Marti Karrer found themselves frustrated by language barriers and bulky translation books. This led to Sigmo, a pocket-sized, easy-to-use translation device that allows users to “talk” in 25 languages.

The device relies on a Bluetooth connection with the user’s smartphone to process translations via the companion app for iOS and Android devices. By pressing the first button, speech is translated from the native language to the desired foreign language where the translation is played aloud through Sigmo’s speaker. When the second button is pressed, the foreign language is translated back into the speaker’s native tongue. Sigmo supports English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Hebrew and Arabic among others. Unfortunately, Sigmo is dependent on data connection, which could be a hitch for travellers, but the company is looking to make translations available offline as soon as possible.

Sigmo is currently being launched via Indiegogo, and has already reached over 100% of it’s target funding with 45 days still to go. The success of it’s funding reflects an increased interest on the part of consumers for products that speak to a global community.