ART4S
Live conferences, every language, real time
ART4S is a near-real-time AI translation and dubbing system for live medical conferences and surgical events. It captures speaker audio, transcribes, translates, and synthesizes dubbed speech — broadcasting synchronized multilingual audio to hundreds of listeners on their own devices. No interpreters, no booths, no headset distribution.
The problem we solve
International medical conferences face a persistent logistics problem: simultaneous interpretation. Human interpreters are expensive, limited in language coverage, and require dedicated infrastructure — soundproof booths, RF headset systems, per-room hardware. Most events can only afford one or two target languages, leaving significant portions of the audience unable to follow. For smaller or mid-size events, the cost of professional interpretation is often prohibitive, meaning multilingual access simply does not happen.
Server-Authoritative Sync
ART4S is built around a non-negotiable principle: every listener hears the same translated audio at the same time. Rather than streaming audio directly to each client — which would desynchronize due to network variance — the server broadcasts each audio segment with a future playback timestamp. Listeners buffer and play at the designated moment, absorbing latency differences. This architecture ensures that a room full of people listening in different languages stays in sync with the live speaker, maintaining the shared experience of a conference.
Core Features
Near-Real-Time AI Translation
Speaker audio is transcribed, translated, and synthesized into dubbed speech within seconds. The full pipeline — from spoken word to translated audio in the listener's ear — operates with a latency designed to keep pace with live presentations.
Multi-Room Support
ART4S handles multiple isolated rooms simultaneously. Each room runs its own independent pipeline — separate operator, separate audio stream, separate listener channels — with no cross-talk between sessions. Tested with two concurrent rooms at a single event.
Context-Aware Medical Translation
Before each session, the operator can provide presentation context: speaker name, topic, key terminology, and subject-matter background. The LLM uses this context to improve translation accuracy for domain-specific terms, ensuring 'anastomosis' is not rendered as 'connection' mid-surgery.
Synchronized Listener Playback
All listeners in a room receive translated audio with timestamp-based playback coordination. Whether connected from the front row or a remote stream, everyone hears the same segment at the same moment — preserving the collective conference experience.
Operator Dashboard
A dedicated operator interface provides live control over audio capture, room assignment, language selection, and pipeline monitoring. Operators see real-time transcripts and can provide contextual guidance to the translation engine during sessions.
Mobile-First Listener Access
Attendees join a translation channel from their own smartphone — no dedicated hardware required. A simple room selection interface connects them to the live translated audio stream. Late joiners receive buffered segments to catch up.
Automatic Reconnection
If a listener's connection drops due to network instability, the system automatically reconnects and replays missed audio segments. No manual intervention required, no lost content during brief connectivity gaps.
Multi-Language Simultaneous Output
A single speaker's audio can be translated and broadcast in multiple target languages simultaneously. Each language operates as a separate channel, allowing attendees to select their preferred language independently.
Key Benefits
Eliminate Interpreter Costs
Replace professional simultaneous interpreters with AI-powered translation. No per-day interpreter fees, no travel, no scheduling constraints.
No Hardware Required
Attendees use their own smartphones with personal earphones. No RF headset distribution, no soundproof booths, no dedicated AV infrastructure.
Scale Language Coverage
Add target languages without proportional cost increase. Serve five languages for roughly the same operational cost as two.
Accessible to Any Event Size
From 20-person workshops to 200+ seat conferences, ART4S scales without the fixed-cost barriers that make traditional interpretation prohibitive for smaller events.
Preserve the Live Experience
Synchronized playback means the audience reacts together — laughter, applause, and engagement stay in sync across languages.
Rapid Deployment
Setup requires a laptop with internet access and a microphone. No advance infrastructure installation, no venue coordination for booth placement.
How it Works
Configure & Connect
The operator creates a session, assigns rooms and target languages, and provides presentation context — speaker details, topic summary, and key terminology. Listeners scan a QR code or follow a link to join their preferred language channel.
Capture & Transcribe
The operator's device captures live speaker audio and streams it to the transcription engine in real time. ElevenLabs Scribe generates timestamped transcripts with sub-second latency.
Translate & Synthesize
Claude translates each segment using the provided context and accumulated session terminology. ElevenLabs synthesizes the translation into natural-sounding speech, maintaining pace with the live presentation.
Broadcast & Sync
Translated audio segments are broadcast to all connected listeners with a future playback timestamp. Each device buffers and plays at the designated moment, ensuring synchronized reception across all attendees and languages.
Technical Specifications
Architecture
Serverless Next.js application with managed WebSocket infrastructure for real-time broadcast. Room-based channel isolation ensures independent pipeline execution per session. Server-authoritative sync model with 1500-3000ms client buffer.
Real-Time Infrastructure
Ably managed WebSocket platform provides connection handling, guaranteed message delivery, automatic reconnection, and message history for late joiners. 700+ global edge points of presence for low-latency distribution.
AI Services
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 for real-time transcription with 150ms latency and 90+ language support. Anthropic Claude for context-aware medical translation. ElevenLabs for neural text-to-speech synthesis.
Security & Reliability
Token-based authentication for operator and listener sessions. Encrypted API channels for all audio processing. Managed infrastructure with 99.999% uptime SLA on the broadcast layer. Process-level error handling to prevent single-point failures during live events.
Deployment
Cloud-hosted on Vercel with edge distribution. Operator requires a laptop with stable internet and microphone input. Listeners require a smartphone with earphones. No local hardware installation, no venue modifications.
International Arthroscopy Symposium
A European surgical society organizes an annual two-day arthroscopy symposium with 180 attendees from twelve countries. Historically, they provided English and French simultaneous interpretation — costing €8,000 per day for two interpreter teams, plus €3,000 for booth rental and RF headset systems. Spanish, German, and Portuguese-speaking attendees were left without support, and the society received consistent feedback about language barriers limiting the event's international reach.
For the current edition, the society deploys ART4S across both conference rooms. The morning session runs live surgery commentary from the operating theater, while the afternoon session features didactic lectures in the main hall. Each room has a dedicated operator who configures language channels and provides speaker context — the surgeon's subspecialty, the procedure being performed, and key anatomical terminology for the session.
Attendees scan a QR code displayed at registration and select their preferred language. Within seconds they are receiving synchronized translated audio through their own earphones. The surgery room broadcasts in five languages simultaneously — English, French, Spanish, German, and Portuguese — while the lecture hall runs four. When a speaker references a specific instrument or anatomical structure, the context-primed translation engine renders the term consistently across all languages.
The society eliminates €22,000 in interpretation and hardware costs over the two-day event while expanding language coverage from two languages to five. Post-event surveys show a 40% increase in comprehension satisfaction scores among non-English-speaking attendees. The following year, three additional surgical societies request ART4S deployment for their own international meetings.