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LiveTranslator

Real-time speech translation for multilingual conversations

Two people who share no common language open the app and just talk. Each person sees what the other is saying, translated into their language, live on their screen. I built it in a week because I was tired of being the interpreter between my Polish parents and my Egyptian family.

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Open source · Self-hosted · PWA · Docker

How it works

1. Create a room

2. Scan and join

3. Talk in English

4. Read in Polish

The use case that started it

I live in Egypt. My wife speaks Arabic and English. My parents speak Polish. When they visited, I spent two weeks translating every conversation, every restaurant order, every interaction. Google Translate was too slow and awkward for real conversations, and people gave up on it quickly.

LiveTranslator was my answer. A week later my dad was using it to talk to people who didn't speak Polish, and also to watch English-language ski events with Polish subtitles on his phone. I hadn't planned that second use case, but it worked.

Under the hood

PWA

Works on any phone or laptop. No app store, no installs. Add it to your home screen and it opens like a native app.

Multi-provider routing

Different STT and translation engines for different language pairs. DeepL for European languages, GPT-4o-mini for Arabic, Speechmatics for Polish, with automatic failover.

Multi-language rooms

Up to five nationalities in one room. Everyone sees what everyone else is saying, each in their own language.

Cost tracking

Every API call gets logged with provider, price, and room. Budget alerts at 80% and 95% of monthly limits.

What you need

A server with Docker (even a small VPS works)
At least an OpenAI API key (other providers are optional, for better quality on specific languages)


git clone https://github.com/pawelgawliczek/livetranslator.git

cd livetranslator

cp .env.example .env

docker compose up -d