Language should not decide who gets helped first
My Words is built for the moment when someone needs help, someone is willing to give it, and the only thing in the way is that they do not share a language.
The name
The point of the product is that a person gets to say the thing they actually meant, in the words they actually chose, and have that reach the other person intact. Not a simplified version. Not what a phrasebook had available. Their words.
It is also the test we apply. If what arrives is not what the person meant, the tool has failed, however good the English looked.
Who builds it
My Words is built by C2 Discovery Labs CIC, a community interest company working on responsible technology for public and social benefit. Any surplus is reinvested in that purpose.
My Words began as research into real-time bilingual conversation mediation, which produced a proof-of-concept application called Turnstone. That was developed into a working system and tested in real settings. Who did that work, and what the research was, is on research.
The application has since been moved into C2 Discovery Labs CIC, a community interest company, so that it is held and developed for community and societal benefit rather than as a commercial asset. My Words is that same tested system, rebranded and carried forward. Turnstone is being replaced by My Words rather than run alongside it.
How we talk about it
There is a particular way this kind of product usually gets described, and we have deliberately stayed away from it. No claims of guaranteed accuracy. No suggestion that it removes the need for interpreters. No futuristic framing of what is, in the end, a serious tool for a difficult job.
The tone we aim for is the one a good practitioner uses: calm, specific, clear about what is known and what is not.
What the product is held to
Meaning over words
The job is to move what someone meant, with its tone and its specifics, across into another language.
Uncertainty stays visible
Where the system is unsure, the person using it finds out. Confidence is never implied by silence.
Ask, do not guess
A clarifying question is a better output than a confident sentence that might be wrong.
Human judgment stays in charge
The professional runs the conversation and carries the responsibility. The tool supports, it does not decide.
Dignity on both sides of the screen
The person being helped is a participant, not a subject. They get an interface in their language and are told what is happening.
Say what it is not for
The boundary is published, kept current, and put in front of the people using it. It is not in the terms of service.
Questions, challenges, corrections
If you work in a service where this would help, or you think something on this site overstates what the tool can do, we would rather hear it than not.