A class you can follow without having the language
The lecturer teaches the same class. The student who does not have the language yet hears it in theirs and stops missing half of it.
In a classroom with students from abroad the problem is not that they do not know the subject: it is that they are translating in their heads while the lecturer keeps moving. By the time they catch the sentence, they are two behind.
Where the audio comes from
From the lecturer's lapel microphone or the room system. Many faculties already record lectures and already have that output; where they do not, a lapel mic and a small box cover a whole room.
How it is set up
- 1
The room is registered once, with the language it is taught in.
- 2
The lecturer wears the microphone they already use and changes nothing about the class.
- 3
Students open a link on their phones and pick a language.
- 4
The transcript of the class stays, and with it the notes of whoever never managed to take any.
Why it fits a classroom
The lecturer changes nothing
No speaking slower, no repeating, no separate material. They wear the microphone they always wear.
The notes stay
A transcript with timings is worth having for revision, for whoever missed the class, and for whoever needs to read rather than hear it.
It also serves partial deafness
Hearing the class clean and straight into the ear, in the same language, solves a different problem with the same equipment.
Billed per class, not per student
Three listening or a hundred and twenty, it is the same. What is billed is the lecturer speaking.
When this is not for you
In a language class, where the whole point is that the student wrestles with the language, this works against what is being taught. And in very symbolic subjects — pure maths, chemical notation — what is said out loud is the smaller part of the class, so translating it adds little.
Questions people ask
- Does it work for recorded classes rather than live?
- Yes, but then you do not need live at all: upload the recording and it comes back transcribed and translated, with subtitles, for less money.
- Can a student ask a question in their language?
- If the question goes through a connected microphone, it is translated like any other voice. Without a microphone, it is not heard.
- Is the lecturer's voice stored?
- No. The audio is used to translate it and is not kept, nor used to train anything.
- What does a term cost?
- It is worked out in hours of speech. A subject with three hours a week for fifteen weeks is forty-five hours of class, of which what is billed is what the lecturer actually says — never the whole thing.