Live Multilingual Subtitle System

• Desktop program for live captioning of talks and conference sessions
• Used by the typists producing the captions, the on-site operator, and the audience reading them
• Flow: host opens a room → typist and viewers connect → captions typed and sent → subtitle windows per language → transcript files saved
• One host, one partner typist, up to ten viewers
• Viewers receive only what has been sent, and place the subtitle windows on their own screen

• Accuracy and speed drop when one person types through a whole event → a second typist needed
• Captions breaking or repeating at the point where typists switch
• Captions for foreign-language attendees requiring separate staff per language
• Captions falling behind the speaker when nothing goes out until a sentence is finished
• Screen size, background brightness, and viewing distance differing at every venue

• Word-by-word sending, so captions keep up before a sentence is complete
• Auto-send mode holding back only the last three words → room to fix typos before they go out
• Function keys for sending and deleting (send first word, delete last or first word, send everything and clear the box)
• Sent text marked by background color and locked against editing → no duplicate or missing captions
• Turn handover between two typists → captions continue across the switch
• The partner's in-progress line mirrored live → a clear cue for when to take over

Setup

• Typist and viewers connect to a single host over the same network
• One borderless subtitle window per language, placed over the presentation screen
• Subtitle, transcript, settings, and phrase windows opened side by side during an event

Flow

• Typing → word sent → end of sentence detected → translation per language → subtitle window and transcript file
• Original-language captions go out without waiting for translation; translated captions follow sentence by sentence

• Sentence boundaries detected from periods, question marks, exclamation marks, and line breaks → no half sentences sent for translation
• The previous sentence and its translation passed along with each request → consistent context and terminology
• All target languages translated in parallel → captions stay on time as languages are added
• Post-processing rules for translated text written by the operator (external code loading blocked)
• Subtitle windows moved and resized by mouse, with background opacity from 0 to 255 for overlaying the presentation screen
• Visible line count derived from window height and font size; Chinese and Japanese, which have no word spacing, wrapped by character

• Captions running without a break through long events, with two typists alternating
• Original and translated captions sent in the same layout → multilingual captioning without staff per language
• Subtitles in English, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and French
• Subtitle size, color, position, and transparency adjusted on site
• Everything sent kept as a text file per language, usable as a transcript after the event