Soniox Translate

Real-time translation — with live captions — for the Even Realities G2 smart glasses.

Listen to someone speaking another language and the translation appears on your lens as they speak, with the original transcript right above it. Like subtitles for the real world.

⚡ Virtually real-time — not seconds behind

Even Realities' built-in translation has a noticeable lag: the translated words land on your lens a second or two after they're spoken. Soniox Translate streams every word the moment it's said, so the translation keeps pace with the conversation instead of trailing it. Side by side, ours reads like live subtitles — the stock feature reads like a delayed replay.

Built for Even Hub, powered by Soniox real-time speech AI (60+ languages).

The glasses display is 576×288, 4-bit greyscale (bright green on a transparent, see-through lens). The original language sits up top, the translation below — the empty middle is the real world showing through.

Features

• ⚡ Real-time translation to 24+ target languages (60+ supported by Soniox) — words appear as they're spoken, not a beat behind
• 🪟 Translation-first split view (original on top, translation below) or a clean full-screen translation
• 🎙️ Live transcription of the original language too, hands-free
• 🗣️ Keep-as-is languages — translate everything except the ones you choose
• 👥 Optional speaker labels (per-speaker icons) and sentence-by-sentence layout
• 🎚️ Tunable display — alignment, text width, line spacing, max lines, and a bottom-anchored caption flow that keeps the newest line in a fixed spot
• 📱 Companion phone screen for setup + a live transcript mirror
• 🔑 Bring your own Soniox key — your audio streams under your account, so you control usage and data
• 🔌 Resilient connection — auto-reconnect with backoff, backpressure handling, and serialized BLE calls

How it works

G2 mic ─(PCM s16le 16kHz)─▶ WebView app ─▶ Soniox real-time WS (wss://stt-rt.soniox.com)
                                │                       │  transcript + translation tokens
                                ◀───────────────────────┘
                                ▼
              two text containers on the 576×288 lens (textContainerUpgrade)
              + a companion phone UI (settings + live mirror)

The app is a plain HTML + TypeScript page (Vite) that runs inside the Even companion app's WebView and talks to the glasses through the Even Hub SDK. Microphone audio (PCM s16le @ 16 kHz mono — the G2's native format) streams straight to Soniox's WebSocket API; the returned tokens are split into an original-language stream and a translated stream and rendered on the lens.

Quick start

Requires Node 20+ and a free Soniox API key (console.soniox.com).

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local        # paste your Soniox key into VITE_STT_API_KEY (dev only)

npm run dev                       # Vite dev server at http://localhost:5173
npm run simulate                  # desktop G2 simulator (renders the 576×288 lens)

VITE_STT_API_KEY is a dev-only convenience so the simulator works without typing a key. Production builds ignore it — every user enters their own key in the app's Settings, so they're billed for their own usage.

On real glasses (laptop + phone on the same Wi-Fi, no AP isolation):

npx @evenrealities/evenhub-cli qr --url "http://<your-lan-ip>:5173"

Scan the QR from the Even Realities app (Developer Mode → Scan); the app hot-loads on your G2.

Validate Soniox alone (no glasses needed — synthesizes speech with macOS say):

node scripts/soniox-smoke.mjs "hello from soniox"
SONIOX_TRANSLATE_TO=en SAY_VOICE="Mónica" node scripts/soniox-smoke.mjs "Hola, esto es una prueba."

Settings (in the phone app)

Everything is configured in the companion Settings panel and persisted per-user via the SDK's storage. No env vars beyond the dev key.

Setting	Default	Notes
Soniox API key	—	your own key; required to start
Translate to	English	target language (None = transcript only)
Don't translate	—	language codes to keep as-is, e.g. es, fr (target is always kept)
Show original transcript	on	off = translation full-screen
Alignment	Left	Left / Center (center via space-padding)
Anchor	Bottom	newest line pinned to the bottom (grows up) / Top
Line spacing	Normal	blank lines between sentences (Normal / Relaxed / Loose)
Text width	Full	Full / Wide / Medium / Narrow (centered column)
Max lines	Auto	cap the main pane to the last N lines
Split sentences	on	newline per sentence
Label speakers	off	per-speaker icons (● ■ ★ …) — best with 2+ speakers

Build & package for Even Hub

npm run build                                  # tsc + Vite production build → dist/
npx @evenrealities/evenhub-cli pack app.json dist -o soniox-translate.ehpk

Upload the .ehpk on hub.evenrealities.com. The production build ships no API key — verify with grep <key> dist/ (should be empty).

Screenshots

Spanish → English	Chinese → English	French → English

Project layout

Path	What
src/asr/stt.ts	Soniox real-time client (WS, translation, reconnect, backpressure)
src/main.ts	Glasses layout, text fitting/autoscroll, serial BLE queue, lifecycle
src/ui.ts	Companion phone UI (settings + live mirror)
src/settings.ts, src/languages.ts	Settings model / target-language list
app.json	Even Hub manifest (g2-microphone + network permissions)
assets/	App icon + store screenshots

Privacy

Microphone audio is captured only while the app is open and is sent to Soniox for transcription/translation. Your Soniox API key is stored only on your device.

Credits

• Even Realities / Even Hub — G2 glasses + SDK
• Soniox — real-time speech-to-text & translation
• Text measurement via @evenrealities/pretext

License

MIT — not affiliated with or endorsed by Even Realities or Soniox.