How it works

Before your first call

1. Create an account with your email address and a password. A code arrives by email to confirm the address.
2. Verify your own phone number. This proves the number is yours; Callingual only calls your verified number for your side of the call.
3. Save a card. Calls are charged to it after they end.

Placing a call

1. Enter the other person's name, phone number and language, and pick the voice each of you is heard in.
2. Confirm that they agreed to receive a translated call.
3. Press Call. Callingual rings you first: press 1 on your phone.
4. Callingual rings them. They hear, in their language: "Hello. This is Callingual with a call from [your name]. This is a phone call translated live by AI. If you accept, everything you both say is translated live. The call is not recorded." Then: press 1 to accept, 2 to decline, 3 to block calls from you (and, for a call billed to a company account, from that company). Other Callingual users can still call them. For a call billed to a verified company account they hear "a call from [your name] at [company name]".
5. While they are rung and hear this, you hear "Please wait while we connect [their name, or their number]" and quiet music, and a short note when they answer.
6. When they accept, both of you hear a chime and "You are connected".

Placing a call by phone (dial-in)

Turn on dial-in on the account page and set a phone PIN of 4 to 6 digits that is not easy to guess. Save the people you call often as contacts.

1. Call Callingual's number from your verified phone. It answers in your language. From another phone it says the phone is not recognized: enter your verified phone number, then press pound.
2. Enter your phone PIN on the keypad, then press pound. Never say it: only the keypad is accepted.
3. Say a contact's name or a phone number, or enter the number on the keypad and press pound.
4. Choose their language: press 1 for the one Callingual suggests (the last one you used for that number), or say another. A saved contact's language is used without asking.
5. Callingual reads back the name, number and language: press 1 to call (this confirms they agreed to receive a translated call), 3 to change the language, 2 to change whom to call. This is the only time you press 1 to call.
6. Stay on the line. You hear "Please wait while we connect" and their name, then hold music while they hear the same notice as any other call.

Three wrong PINs, from any phone, lock dial-in for an hour and we email you the calling numbers. The account page lists recent sign-ins, and "Allow dial-in from other phones" can be turned off there. Billing starts when your PIN is accepted and runs until you hang up, menus included, at the same rate per minute as any other call.

Several people can verify the same phone number, for example colleagues on one business line. Each sets a different 6-digit PIN. A call from that number asks for the PIN first, and the PIN picks the account. Three wrong PINs lock dial-in from the number for everyone on it for an hour.

Press * at any time after your PIN to start over: Callingual forgets the person and language chosen so far and asks again whom to call. Nobody is called until you press 1 after the read-back. If no answer is heard, Callingual starts over once, then ends the call.

During the call

• Speak normally and pause at the end of a sentence. The translation follows about two seconds later.
• Fillers such as "um" and "you know", repeated words and false starts are left out of the translation. If you correct yourself, only the correction is translated.
• Press * then 9 to hear the last sentence again, * then 0 to stop what is playing.
• Voices are standard voices. Nobody's own voice is copied.