One microphone, one side at a time
Better Translate Team ·
Both halves of the screen are live at once. Only one of them can use the microphone
at a time. We would rather say that plainly than have you discover it holding a half that never
answers.
Why not both
A phone has one microphone array pointed at a whole room. Two people talking into it at once
produces one audio stream with two voices in it, and splitting that back into two speakers reliably,
in real time, in two different languages, is not a solved problem.
What you would get is not two transcripts. It is two wrong transcripts, each contaminated by the
other person, and a translation confidently built on top of both.
What it looks like in use
If the other half is lit, it has the microphone. Let go there and your side takes it. In practice
a conversation is turn-taking anyway. The thing the split screen removes is not the taking of turns,
it is the passing of the phone.
What we did instead of pretending
The far half stays readable and usable while the near half is listening, so the person opposite
is reading your last sentence rather than waiting at a blank screen. The rotation is doing work even
when the microphone is not on that side.