Following a call with the listener link

This link carries the translation for a single meeting. The person running that call is using Lingvoo to translate it live, and the link lets you listen to and read the conversation in any of the meeting’s languages you prefer. You don’t need an account or any app, only a browser. If you are also in the call, the translator already speaks the translation there; the link gives you captions and lets you choose your own language.

How it works

1. Open the link in a browser. It takes you right to the page for that meeting. There is no sign-up and nothing to download.
2. Pick the language you’d like to hear. The page lists the languages chosen for this meeting. They were set before the call began and won’t change until it is over.
3. Listen in. The status line shows whether the sound is playing; if it asks for play, tap Play once. That same button pauses, so tapping it again turns the sound off.

If you are also in the meeting, please use headphones. Translated speech from your laptop speakers gets picked up by your microphone and fed back into the call for everyone.

What the link gives you

• Translated speech in your chosen language, as people speak.
• Live captions of the same conversation, to read along or read on their own.
• One meeting can be followed in several languages at the same time: each listener chooses theirs, and a session supports up to 500 listener connections (each time the link opens in a browser counts as one, reloads included, and closing the tab doesn’t free it up again).

If it’s quiet at first

A quiet start is usually expected, not a fault. Almost every case comes down to one of two reasons.

The sound is paused

Lingvoo tries to play the sound as soon as you choose a language, but your browser may block that first try. The status line shows what happened: if it asks for play, tap Play once. The button switches between play and pause, so if the sound was on until you tapped it, your tap is what paused it. Tap once more to keep listening.

No one has used another language yet

Spoken translation is made only for the other languages in the session, so your own language is never spoken back to you. If you listen in English while the whole room speaks English, you will hear silence, as intended, and as soon as someone switches to another meeting language you will hear them. Captions keep running the whole time: everything said is captioned, and lines in your own language show as the original text, so the page always has something on it.

Useful to know

• Each link is tied to one session. Your next meeting will have another link, and if the host stops and restarts a session (say, to add a language), they will send a new link and the old one will go silent.
• The translator is visible to everyone. It joins as a participant and shows up in the participant list like any guest.
• The link is for following along. You listen and read through it, and you speak in the meeting itself as usual.
• Sessions last up to 8 hours. A longer meeting runs as two sessions, and the second one has its own link.

Privacy, briefly

Calls are translated live, and no recording is kept once they end. During the session, anyone with this link can read the captions; after it ends, only the account that ran the session can. More details are in Privacy and your data.

If something isn’t working

• There’s no sound at all. Check the status line and tap Play if it asks, then make sure your device volume is up and the browser tab isn’t muted.
• The sound cuts out or captions stop moving. Reload the page and pick your language again. The stream resumes from where the conversation is now, and Play is there if the status line asks for it.
• Wrong language, or you’d like a different one. Pick the language again on the same page.
• Still nothing, whatever you try. Ask the host whether the meeting is still on and the translator is still there. A session ends when the host stops it, when the account has no translation minutes left, or after eight hours, and the link of an ended session stays silent.

If the meeting is on and the page still shows nothing, the host can stop the session and start a new one, which creates a new link for everyone. If that doesn’t help, write to us at support@lingvoo.com. Telling us what you saw and which language you picked is a good start.