AI interpreter vs human interpreter
Compare what your audience gets, what your team needs, and the evidence on speed and accuracy.
How far behind the speaker?About 2.4 seconds with Baian. Lower is better.
How often Baian was preferredOver professional translations · English into each language
The line marks 50%: an even split.
In the room
| Interpreters in a booth | Baian | |
|---|---|---|
| What the audience needs | A receiver headset from the desk | Their own phone and a QR code |
| Read or listen | Listen only | Read the translation or listen to it |
| In the room | Interpreter booths and a technician | A laptop or tablet connected to the sound desk |
| An app to download | No | No. It opens in the phone’s browser |
During your event
BaianRuns for the whole session.
InterpretersSwap about every 30 minutes.
BaianNo fatigue, however long it runs.
InterpretersIn one study, meaning errors rose after 30 minutes.
BaianBuilt to translate the speech, not summarise it.
InterpretersIn one study, omitted meaning in 350 of 590 segments.
BaianSeveral languages from one stage feed.
InterpretersOne interpreter team per language.
BaianThe speech and each translation, saved.
InterpretersSeparate transcription needed.
BaianDownload the translated audio afterwards.
InterpretersOnly if someone records the booth.
Accuracy, recorded
Working from a recording, Baian’s caption tool scored higher in Hausa, Swahili, Tamil and Urdu. The judge found no clear difference in 21 more languages.
Subtitle resultsBaian’s subtitles were preferred:
The line marks 50%: an even split.
Customer story · QIYADA, Doha
At Qatar Foundation’s QIYADA conference, attendees scanned the code and followed Arabic and English on their own phones. The interpreter booths were taken down.
Questions
In our recordings, Baian’s first translated text was estimated at about 2.4 seconds behind the speaker, and captions in the speaker’s own language at about 1 second. A separate study of European Parliament interpreters measured about 2.7 seconds. The two were measured differently, so treat them as a rough guide.
We haven’t tested Baian against interpreters on accuracy. Against professional written translations, Google’s automatic judge found no clear overall difference from Baian’s live translation in Arabic, Hindi and Korean, and preferred our subtitles in four languages. Interpreting is hard for people too: one study found interpreters left out part of the meaning in 350 of 590 speech segments.
Simultaneous interpreting is tiring, so interpreters usually take turns of about 30 minutes. In one study, their meaning errors rose steadily after 30 minutes on task. Baian doesn’t need breaks.
When an event requires accredited interpreters, or when every word carries legal weight and needs a person to answer for it. You can use Baian for most sessions and keep interpreters for those moments.
Yes. Baian can cover the languages your interpreters don’t, or provide captions and a transcript for the sessions they do.
Bring a short recording, your languages and your audience size. We’ll show you the listener experience.
Arrange a demo WhatsAppCaption Tool scored above the translators in Hausa, Swahili, Tamil and Urdu (preferred on 67% to 75% of sentences). Baian’s live interpreter had about the same overall quality in Arabic, Hindi and Korean.
148 English sentences that also have professional human translations. Measures translation quality with Google’s MetricX-24 automatic judge.
Baian ran the test. The human translations come from the public FLoRes-200 set.
Baian worked from the spoken audio; the translators worked from text. We compared scores sentence by sentence and counted a result only when the 95% range did not cross zero and two runs agreed. “About the same” means the test found no clear difference; it does not prove the translations were identical.
Median 2.1 seconds across 53 recordings in 15 languages (1.3 to 2.7 seconds per recording).
How long after a sentence ends its finished translation appears.
Baian, on its production Live service.
Measured on Baian’s production Live service from 13 to 15 October 2026, from the end of each spoken sentence to the finished English line in our captured listener feed. Earlier words in a long sentence wait longer than this. Spoken audio arrives a little after the text and was not measured.
Estimated medians: the speaker’s words appear in their own language about 1.0 seconds after they are spoken, and the first translation covering a word about 2.4 seconds after it.
Estimated from our captured listener feed for the same 53 recordings. The capture is incomplete, so some early previews are missing, and previews can still change before the sentence is finished. Times are measured to the feed, not to a phone screen.
Median 2.69 seconds behind the speaker, across 180 speeches.
About 30 minutes is the recommended turn. Meaning errors rose steadily after 30 minutes on task (pilot study, five professionals).
Part of the meaning was missing in 350 of 590 speech segments.