Real-time earphone translation: bridging English and Kiswahili conversations
Two people, two languages, one conversation. We are building a real-time translation system where English and Kiswahili speakers can talk naturally through earphones — hearing each other in their own language.
Overview
SAUTI Translate is a real-time speech-to-speech translation system for English and Kiswahili. Two people wearing earphones can have a natural conversation — each speaking their own language, each hearing the other in theirs.
Why it matters
East Africa sits at the intersection of English and Kiswahili. Business meetings, healthcare consultations, and customer service calls routinely cross this language boundary. Over 200 million Kiswahili speakers interact daily with English-dominant systems — in healthcare, banking, government, and business. Existing translation tools require typing or waiting — neither works for natural conversation. Real-time voice translation removes the interpreter bottleneck and makes these interactions seamless.
How it works
The system chains three models in a streaming pipeline: speech recognition captures what is said, machine translation converts it, and text-to-speech delivers it — all in under two seconds through standard earphones.
Try it
The translation pipeline is live in demo mode. Visit the [Translate playground](/translate) to try English–Kiswahili voice translation.