AI-powered smart glasses developed by Het Nationale Theater, capable of converting live spoken text from actors real time into subtitles in 223 languages, were introduced this week.
Visitors to the Holland Festival (the largest international performing arts festival in the Netherlands) were the first to experience the LiveText technology behind these theatre glasses.
Het Nationale Theater created the concept and has developed the technology over the past few years in collaboration with partner XRAI, using Dante technology.
Non-Dutch speakers and people with hearing loss read via the glasses the spoken text of the actors as subtitles in their preferred language, while watching The Seasons. A theatrical marathon by Het Nationale Theater based on the books by Scottish author Ali Smith.
Currently subtitles are rarely used in theatres due to the labour-intensive process of preloading scripts and showing the text. The innovation of LiveText allows for subtitles in 223 languages on demand, including those with different reading directions, characters or alphabets. This technology has global applications, enabling people who don't speak the local language, or who have hearing loss, to attend and enjoy theatre performances using smart glasses. An estimated one in five people worldwide experience some degree of hearing loss. Although initially developed for theatre, the technology has broader potential applications, such as multilingual conferences or international live events.
The subtitles are generated directly from the actors’ voices. The sound (spoken or sung) is transmitted via each actor’s individual microphone to the audio mixing console and then to the software. The software converts the spoken words into real-time text (translated if necessary) and sends it directly to the smart glasses worn by the audience. The text appears at the same visual distance as the actors on stage, creating a calm and seamless viewing experience. Different colours are used to indicate which character is speaking.
image: Ada Nieuwendijk