Audinate has collaborated with the Het Nationale Theater and XRAI to bring real-time subtitles to performances through AI-enabled smart glasses.
The new technology supports 223 languages for use in theatres and live events.
Starting this autumn, attendees at select performances by Het Nationale Theatre in The Hague and on tour will allow visitors with hearing loss or those who speak little or no Dutch to wear smart glasses for free that display subtitles in different colours to indicate which actor is speaking.
Dubbed as ‘LiveText’, the official launch is expected to take place at the end of June during the Holland Festival.
The new implementation, devised from a concept of Het Nationale Theater using Dante systems, uses subtitles based on the actors’ voices, not on a preloaded script. The audio from each actor is transmitted via Dante to an Avid Venue S6L audio desk, then sent to XRAI’s AI-enabled software, XRAI Stream.
The software converts speech to text in real time, translates where needed, and transmits subtitles to the XREAL Air 2 Pro AR glasses in the theatre’s auditorium, having the subtitles appear almost simultaneously, correctly labelled when characters are speaking.
Cees Debets, director, Het Nationale Theater, commented: “We’re proud to be the first in the world to offer this innovative service for non-Dutch speakers and the deaf and hard of hearing.
“This marks a major step in making theatre accessible to all. We’re working hard to share this innovation with other theatres and producers so that more people in the Netherlands and around the world can enjoy theatre without barriers or limitations.”