On the big stage: live translation for 40,000 at Taipei Dome

Members came from around the world, and they did not share a language. A convention like this only holds together if everyone can follow the ceremonies, speeches and addresses as they happen — not catch up on them afterwards.

At Taipei Dome, the translation also had to live inside a professional show. The morning ceremony moved from item to item on a tightly coordinated programme. Speeches and VIP addresses were full of personal names, organisation names and event-specific terms. And on the big screens, captions had to stay easy to follow while leaving room for the live camera feed and the production’s screen design.

Orato Flow’s event rundown laid the translation out against the morning ceremony’s programme, item by item, so it moved with the ceremony from one part to the next.

For the speeches and VIP addresses, custom glossaries and custom translations covered the names, organisation names and terminology particular to the event — so they came through the way the organisers write them, rather than the way a general model would guess.

For the production director, how the captions looked mattered as much as what they said. Orato Flow’s caption display let the team set how much text sat on screen at once — enough to keep the translation readable, little enough to keep the picture uncluttered.

That left the production free to balance language access against the visual impact of the show, with the captions running as part of the presentation rather than competing with it.

For the Taipei Dome programme, the production team set up a dedicated wired internet connection for Orato Flow, to keep it running reliably through the full eight hours.

Around it was a concert-level production crew — quick to respond, closely coordinated, and flexible whenever something needed adjusting. Orato Flow worked inside that environment as one more part of the show, from the morning ceremony to the end of the day.

Orato Flow carried the translation across all five days of the convention, including the full day at Taipei Dome, and the feedback on the translation experience was positive.

The audience had two ways to follow along: bilingual captions on the venue’s screens, or their choice of 12 languages on their own phones. And the same browser-based platform that runs an everyday meeting ran here inside a stadium production — with display options and language tools that organisers can set up and operate themselves.