Live captions for events put the speaker’s words on screen as they are spoken. With SIM.AI, captions appear on each guest’s own phone, a few seconds behind the speaker, either in the original language or translated into the guest’s language. They help three groups at once: deaf and hard of hearing guests, people sitting in rooms where the sound is poor, and multilingual audiences who follow a second language more easily by reading than by listening.
Captions are not a cure-all. Machine captions can contain errors, and some situations still call for a human captioner or a sign language interpreter. This article covers what captions do well, where they fall short and how to set them up properly at an event in the UAE.
What live captions are, and what they are not
A live caption is a written version of speech, produced in real time. There are two kinds you will meet at events.
- Same-language captions show the speaker’s words in the language they are speaking. An Arabic keynote produces Arabic captions; an English panel produces English captions.
- Translated captions show the speaker’s words in another language. An Arabic keynote can produce English, Urdu or French captions at the same time.
Both come from the same audio feed. Speech recognition turns the speaker’s voice into text, and machine translation produces the other languages. With SIM.AI’s live captions for events, each guest picks a language on their phone and reads along. A “Show original” option puts the speaker’s own words one tap away, which bilingual guests use to check a term or a name.
Captions are not subtitles. Subtitles are edited before anyone sees them. Live captions are not checked before they appear, so the occasional error reaches the screen. That difference shapes every decision below.
Accessibility: deaf and hard of hearing guests
For a hard of hearing guest, a ballroom with a good PA system can still be hard work. Hearing aids pick up the room as well as the speaker. A guest may follow the first ten minutes and then tire. Same-language captions on a phone, held at a comfortable distance, take much of that strain away.
A few points make captions genuinely useful for these guests:
- Tell people captions are available before the event. Put it in the invitation and on the registration page, not only on the day.
- Seat people where they can see the speaker. Captions work best alongside lip-reading and facial expression, not instead of them.
- Keep the phone readable. Guests can enlarge the text with their phone’s own display settings. Suggest they bring earbuds only if they also want audio.
- Ask what guests need. Some hard of hearing guests prefer captions; others prefer a hearing loop or a seat near the front. A short question on the registration form saves guesswork.
Where captions are not enough
Deaf guests whose first language is a sign language may find captions in written Arabic or English hard going over a long session, because it is effectively a second language. In the UAE, that may mean Emirati or another Arabic sign language. If you know signing guests are attending, book a sign language interpreter, positioned where those guests can see them clearly, and offer captions as well.
When a guest has formally requested a captioning accommodation, or when the event carries legal or contractual duties, a human CART captioner (Communication Access Realtime Translation) is the safer choice. A trained captioner produces near-verbatim text, corrects as they go and knows how to handle names and speaker changes. Machine captions are a strong everyday tool, but they do not carry that level of responsibility.
Noisy rooms: exhibition halls and open stages
Exhibition halls in Dubai and Abu Dhabi often run several open stages side by side. Sound from one stage bleeds into the next, stands play video on loop, and visitors talk as they walk past. A guest three rows back may only catch half of what a speaker says.
Captions help here in a simple way. The text comes from a clean audio feed taken at the stage’s sound desk, not from a microphone in the room. The guest’s phone shows what the speaker said, regardless of what the hall sounds like. Guests who want audio can listen through their own earbuds, which shuts out much of the hall.
What matters most is the quality of that feed:
- Take audio from the mixer, not the room. A line from the desk is clean. A microphone placed in the hall picks up everything else.
- Every speaker on a microphone. Questions from the floor need a handheld microphone. Speech that never reaches the desk never reaches the captions.
- One person at a time. Overlapping speakers are one of the most common causes of caption errors, for machines and humans alike.
Our venue and AV integration team connects to the sound system the venue already has, so the AV crew carries on as normal. For stand-based sessions and open stages, our page on exhibitions and trade shows covers typical set-ups.
Multilingual audiences: reading versus listening
A Gulf audience is rarely one language. A government briefing in Abu Dhabi might include Arabic speakers, English speakers from many countries, and guests whose first language is Hindi, Urdu or Filipino. Many of them understand English or Arabic well, but not equally well when listening at speed.
Reading and listening are different skills. Plenty of professionals read a second language comfortably and still lose the thread when a speaker talks fast, uses idiom or has an unfamiliar accent. Captions give those guests a second channel.
There are three common patterns:
| Guest | What usually works | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fluent in the speaker’s language but hard of hearing | Same-language captions | The words are familiar; the problem is hearing them |
| Comfortable reading the speaker’s language, less so listening | Same-language captions with “Show original” | Reading at their own pace fills the gaps |
| Not comfortable in the speaker’s language | Translated captions, or spoken interpretation with captions | They need the content in their own language |
With SIM.AI, guests choose audio and captions or captions only, so each person decides. Many guests use spoken AI interpretation through earbuds and glance at the captions to check numbers and names. For a closer look at the most common pair in the region, see Arabic interpretation and our article on Arabic–English live interpretation in the UAE.
Right-to-left scripts
Arabic, Urdu and Persian captions run right to left. They need to display correctly, including mixed lines where an English product name or a number sits inside an Arabic sentence. Each language in SIM.AI is listed in its own script. If your speakers mix many English brand names into Arabic, ask to see a sample of those lines during a demo, so you know how they will read.
Honest limits of machine captions
Machine captions are useful because they are fast and cover many languages at once. They are not perfect, and guests should not be told they are.
They are most likely to go wrong with:
- names, especially names from a language other than the one being spoken;
- heavy accents and fast, unplanned speech;
- poor audio, such as a speaker who turns away from the microphone;
- overlapping speakers in a lively panel;
- humour and idiom, which translate badly in any form;
- highly specialised terms the system has not been told about.
A custom glossary reduces errors with names, titles and technical terms. For legal, government and technical sessions, Precision mode enforces approved terminology and pronunciation. Neither removes errors entirely. If you are new to these terms, our interpretation glossary explains them in plain language.
For legally binding proceedings, medical consent, sensitive negotiations or VIP protocol where every word matters, choose a human CART captioner for captions and certified human interpreters for speech, or a hybrid set-up with AI and human interpreters. Sim Trans provides the human interpreters.
Practical set-up for live captions at an event
Here is how a captioned session usually runs, from planning to the day after.
Two to three weeks before
- Decide the languages. Same-language captions for the speakers’ languages, plus any translated caption languages. Languages can be added during a live session if a late request comes in.
- Build the glossary. Speaker names, titles, organisations, acronyms and product names. Our guide on how to prepare a glossary for an interpreted event includes a free template.
- Tell guests. Mention captions on the invitation and registration page, and ask about access needs.
In the week of the event
- Confirm the audio feed with the venue’s AV team: a line from the mixer to our position at the side of the room.
- Print the QR codes. Table cards, badges and a slide on the main screen. The event toolkit includes a card and QR designer.
- Check connectivity. Guests need mobile data or venue Wi-Fi. In basement ballrooms, confirm the Wi-Fi details and put them on the table card.
On the day
- Brief the speakers and moderator. Speak into the microphone, one person at a time, and repeat questions from the floor if there is no handheld microphone.
- Announce the captions at the start, with the QR on screen for the first few minutes.
- Monitoring. Our team watches every language channel live throughout the session. The client does not touch the system.
After the event
You receive transcripts and records: written transcripts per language (.docx and .xlsx), standard subtitle files for the event video, audio recordings of every language channel, and a usage report showing languages used, session duration and listeners per language. Subtitle files can be reviewed and corrected before the video is published, which is where the occasional live error is put right.
Next step
If you are planning a conference, exhibition stage or town hall and want captions for accessibility, noisy rooms or a multilingual audience, we can show you how it looks on a guest’s phone with your own content. Book a demo with the SIM.AI team and tell us about the venue, the languages and the guests you expect.