Live Translate
1. What it is
Live Translate is a real-time speech-to-speech interpreter for frontline conversations. Two people who do not share a language each speak in their own, and the app transcribes, translates, and speaks back in the other person’s language — no bilingual colleague needed.
- Enablement: Live Translate is pay-as-you-go. It requires no license; usage meters through the AI/Voice credit pool. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace.
- What it is not: Live Translate is the real-time spoken interpreter. The company glossary it shares also governs written translation across chat, voicenotes, alerts, policies, SOPs, and Sites — but those surfaces are part of their own apps, not this one.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace, find Live Translate, and enable it.
- (Optional) Go to Admin → Integrations and connect a dedicated translation provider — AWS Translate or DeepL. Without one, translation falls back to the platform-managed engine automatically; no extra configuration is required.
- (Optional) Go to Admin → Translation and adopt an industry starter pack or add your own glossary terms so company-specific vocabulary translates correctly from the start.
- Confirm it works: open Live Translate from the app launcher, select two languages, hold the talk button, and speak. You should hear the translation spoken back.
The app works immediately after enabling. The glossary and the dedicated provider are governance layers — they improve accuracy, but nothing blocks use without them.
3. How it fits together
Two interpreter modes
Live Translate offers two ways to use it, selectable via tabs at the top of the app.
One device — two people share a single phone or tablet. Each side of the screen has its own language selector and talk button. Person A holds their button and speaks; the translation plays aloud for Person B, and vice versa. Example: a warehouse supervisor (English) and a new hire (Spanish) stand together reviewing a safety checklist — one phone between them, each tapping their side to talk.
Two devices — each person uses their own phone. One person starts a session and receives a six-character code; the other enters it on their device to join. Once paired, each person speaks on their own screen. The translation is broadcast to the other device and played automatically. Two devices also supports a hands-free mode where the app listens continuously and translates when it detects speech, with no button press required.
A paired session expires after 2 hours. Only the two participants can send or receive turns — a third person with the code is rejected.
The turn pipeline
Each spoken turn runs three steps in sequence: the speech is transcribed (speech-to-text), the transcript is translated through the resolved provider, and the translation is spoken back (text-to-speech). Turns are ephemeral — the audio is never stored. The transcript and translation appear on screen during the conversation, but nothing is persisted once the session ends.
The company glossary
The glossary is a set of terminology rules managed at Admin → Translation. It applies to every translation surface in the platform, not just Live Translate — chat, voicenotes, alerts, policies, SOPs, and Sites all use the same glossary.
Two types of rule are available:
- Mapping — a term in one language must translate to a specific term in another. For example, “forklift” (English → Spanish) must always become “montacargas”, not a generic translation a provider might choose.
- Do not translate — a term must pass through untranslated regardless of target language. Brand names, product codes, and acronyms like “OSHA” are common examples.
A worked example: a retail chain adds three glossary rules — “stockroom” → “almacén” (mapping, English → Spanish), “backstock” → “existencias de reserva” (mapping, English → Spanish), and “SKU” (do not translate). When a supervisor says “check the backstock SKUs in the stockroom”, the interpreter delivers “revisa las SKU de existencias de reserva en el almacén” instead of the generic translation. The same three rules also apply when a manager translates a shift note in chat.
The glossary enforces rules at the platform layer, not inside any one provider. The mechanism is protect-then-restore: matched terms are replaced with placeholder tokens before the text reaches the translation engine, and the correct terms are substituted back after translation returns. This means rules work identically whether the tenant uses AWS Translate, DeepL, or the platform’s LLM engine, and whether the surface is the spoken interpreter or a written translation.
The quality loop
Any user can flag a translation as wrong by tapping the Wrong? button on a translated turn (or on a translated voicenote or chat message). The flag lands in a pending queue visible at Admin → Translation. An admin can then:
- Resolve the flag — turn it into a glossary term in one step by supplying the correct translation.
- Dismiss it — discard the flag if the translation was acceptable.
Admins receive an in-app notification when flags arrive (throttled to one per 6 hours) and an email digest (throttled to one per 24 hours).
Provider resolution
Translation runs through the first available engine in this order:
- A dedicated provider the admin connected at Admin → Integrations — AWS Translate or DeepL (bring-your-own-key).
- The platform-managed engine — AWS Translate with platform credentials, available to every tenant with no setup.
- The LLM fallback — the platform’s language model, always available with zero configuration.
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech always run on the platform’s OpenAI key. If that key is unavailable, Live Translate shows an unavailability notice on load rather than letting users discover the failure mid-conversation.
Supported languages
Live Translate supports 15 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Polish.
In one-device mode, either side can also be set to Detect language, which identifies the speaker’s language automatically from their speech. Both sides cannot be set to Detect at the same time — the Detect side must speak first so the app knows what language to translate into. The user’s profile language is preselected by default if it is in the supported set; otherwise English is selected.
4. Running it
Managing the glossary
- Go to Admin → Translation.
- Add terms individually using the form at the top, or adopt an industry starter pack. Three packs ship with the platform:
- Warehouse & Manufacturing Safety (English → Spanish) — 13 terms including lockout-tagout, PPE, and muster point
- Retail & Store Operations (English → Spanish) — 9 terms including stockroom, planogram, and shrinkage
- Healthcare & Facilities (English → Spanish) — 7 terms including shift handoff, charting, and isolation room
- To bulk-add terms, import a CSV file with the header row shown below. Re-importing a previously exported file skips duplicates automatically.
- To export the full glossary, click Export — useful for backup or for sharing terminology across tenants.
The import file carries one column for each field on the add-term form — From, To, Term, Translate to, and Type — under this header row:
source_language,target_language,source_text,target_text,term_type
Each term can be marked active or inactive, and optionally set to case-sensitive matching. Language codes must be ISO 639-1 format (e.g. “en”, “es”, “pt-br”).
Reviewing flagged translations
- Go to Admin → Translation. The Flagged translations section shows pending flags, oldest first.
- For each flag, decide whether the translation was genuinely wrong.
- To fix it, type the offending term and its correct translation and click Resolve — this creates a glossary mapping and closes the flag in one step.
- To discard a flag without action, click Dismiss.
The flagged-phrases list on the Analytics page shows which phrases are flagged most often and whether the glossary already covers them.
Viewing translation analytics
- Go to Admin → Translation, then click Analytics.
- The dashboard shows translation, transcription, and text-to-speech counts; success rate and average latency; a daily trend chart; the active engine; glossary coverage; and the most-flagged phrases. The time window is selectable at 7, 30, or 90 days.
Analytics are content-free — they show counts and languages, never conversation text. The most-flagged-phrases table cross-references each phrase against the active glossary, so you can see at a glance which recurring complaints already have a term covering them and which still need one.
5. Settings
Live Translate has no per-app configuration keys. Its behavior is governed by:
| Setting | Where | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| App enablement | Admin → Apps Marketplace | Off | Whether users can access Live Translate |
| Translation provider | Admin → Integrations → Translation | Platform managed | Which engine handles the translation step |
| Glossary terms | Admin → Translation | None | Company terminology enforced on every translation |
Glossary terms default to Active and case-insensitive matching when created. Glossary suggestions (user-flagged translations) default to Pending status until an admin resolves or dismisses them.
Sample data
To explore the glossary and analytics without creating real terms, go to Admin → Translation and click Load Sample Data. This creates demonstration glossary terms and flagged suggestions you can experiment with, then remove when you are ready.
6. More help
- Live Translate FAQ — specific setup and operating questions, limits, and troubleshooting
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Live Translate from these articles.