Get your internet ready for live translation.

Get the internet ready in six steps

Most problems are congestion or a weak signal, not speed.

1. 1

   Know which connections matter

   Live translation uses several connections at once, and each can fail on its own:

   • The streaming connection. The Windows computer at the desk, or the phone, tablet or laptop streaming from a browser, sends the speaker’s sound out. If this drops, the words stop for everybody.
   • Each audience phone. It uses the venue’s Wi-Fi or its own mobile data to receive the words. A problem here affects only that phone, or the phones on that network.
   • The room screen and any caption overlay. Each runs on a computer with its own connection.
   • A device feeding a headphone system, if you use one. It is feeding everyone with a receiver.

   Streaming computer sends the sound

   SpanVoice

   the internet

   Audience phones Wi-Fi or mobile data

   Room screen its own connection

2. 2

   Give the streaming computer the best connection

   This is the one that matters most, so give it the best connection in the room:

   • Wired if you can. Wi-Fi is fine when it is steady, but a cable removes a whole class of problems. If the streaming device has a wired option, use it.
   • Steady matters more than fast. The desk app’s audio format carries about 256 kilobits a second of raw audio, before network overhead. That is not a minimum connection speed: allow spare upload capacity, and test the real session on the venue’s connection. What hurts is a connection that is congested, so check that nothing else is using it heavily during the event, such as cloud backups, uploads, video calls or updates.
   • Test on the venue’s own network. The desk app has no network settings, but a managed network can still block things even when ordinary websites open. If websites load but streaming cannot connect, ask the venue’s IT team to check the connection. Do not open inbound ports or turn off security to get it working.
   • Check where the signal is. If it must use Wi-Fi, test the signal at the spot where the computer will sit, not at the router.

   Ethernet removes the wireless link from the streaming computer. It does not protect against a fault in a shared router or the venue’s internet service. A separate “staff” Wi-Fi name does not necessarily give separate capacity either, because it may share the same access points and internet connection. For a large audience, ask the venue to reserve capacity for the streaming device.

3. 3

   Plan for the audience’s phones

   People read on their own phones, on the venue’s Wi-Fi or on their own mobile data. The reading page itself is light, but a venue with a large audience and a guest Wi-Fi network should expect many phones to join it, and a congested network makes the words arrive late for everyone on it. Reading the words and listening to spoken translation place different demands on the connection, so if many guests will listen through the venue’s Wi-Fi, test that as well as the text.

   • If the venue’s Wi-Fi is doubtful, tell people they can use mobile data, and ask the first few arrivals to try it.
   • If the Wi-Fi asks people to sign in on a page first, put the instructions next to the QR sign, because the reading page will not open until they have.
   • If one person sees nothing and the people around them are fine, ask them to switch between Wi-Fi and mobile data.

   If a phone loses its connection, the reading page shows No connection and the line “Check your internet. This page reconnects by itself.” It does. While the event is on air, the service sends a reconnecting phone the recent lines it kept, up to the last 30 minutes, so the text it missed is normally back; test this on your own phone. Spoken translation is live: do not assume audio missed during a drop is replayed.

4. 4

   Check the screens and the overlay

   The projector page and the caption overlay each need their own connection, on whatever computer is driving them. If that connection drops, the projector shows a small red dot in the bottom corner, and the overlay shows a red reconnecting… label. Both reconnect on their own.

   The overlay label is drawn on the page itself, so it can appear on your video output while it lasts. If a device is feeding a headphone system, give it the better connection of the two you have, because everyone holding a receiver depends on it.

5. 5

   Know what a drop looks like, and have a spare

   If the streaming connection drops, the desk app says Reconnecting in red and counts the attempts. It retries after 1, 2, 4 and 8 seconds, then every 10 seconds, and it does not give up until you press Stop streaming. Give it a few seconds before changing anything. When it succeeds the line under the button says Back on air. The browser streamer shows Reconnecting with the seconds until its next try, and also keeps trying by itself.

   • Speech during the outage is not recovered. Nothing is sent while the connection is down, so the words for that stretch are missing.
   • Back within five minutes, the same event carries on and readers keep the text on their screens. After a longer gap a fresh event starts and their screens clear. Time while the sending connection is down is not counted towards what you are charged, and restarting adds no minimum or extra fee.
   • Phones and screens reconnect by themselves, as above.

   For an event that matters, have a second route ready, such as a phone you can use as a hotspot or a second connection. It needs usable mobile coverage in the room and enough data. Switching may interrupt the event, and a hotspot on the streaming computer does not restore a projector or a headphone-feed device that is on a different connection. Test the switch before the day.

6. 6

   Test it the day before

   A connection that works for you in an empty room may behave differently with a hall full of phones on it. Run a short event and check:

   • The desk app or browser streamer stays on Live for ten minutes without reconnecting.
   • Words reach a phone on the venue Wi-Fi and a phone on mobile data. A few seconds behind the speaker is normal. Much more than that, for everybody at once, has several possible causes, so use the check sequence in the troubleshooting cards.
   • The room screen shows no red dot.
   • If you have a spare route, switch to it on purpose and check the event recovers.

   A ten-minute test is a first check, not proof that the connection will hold for a whole event.

   A full hall behaves differently from an empty one. On the day, ask the first arrivals to scan, check words arrive on both Wi-Fi and mobile data, and keep the spare route within reach.