A real-world system for simultaneous translation of German lectures

Abstract

We present a real-time automatic speech translation system for university lectures that can interpret several lectures in parallel. University lectures are characterized by a multitude of diverse topics and a large amount of technical terms. This poses specific challenges, e.g., a very specific vocabulary and language model are needed. In addition, in order to be able to translate simultaneously, i.e., to interpret the lectures, the components of the systems need special modifications. The output of the system is delivered in the form or realtime subtitles via a web site that can be accessed by the students attending the lecture through mobile phones, tablet computers or laptops. We evaluated the system on our German to English lecture translation task at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The system is now being installed in several lecture halls at KIT and is able to provide the translation to the students in several parallel sessions.