The University of Barcelona develops an AI tool to transcribe and translate classes and meetings in real time
The University of Barcelona (UB) has developed SCRIBAL, an artificial intelligence system capable of transcribing, subtitling and translating spoken content in real time to improve accessibility and multilingual communication in educational and professional environments.
The technology was developed at UB’s Language and Computation Centre (CLiC), directed by Dr Mariona Taulé, as part of a project led by Dr Mireia Farrús, researcher at the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics of the Faculty of Philology and Communication at UB, specialising in artificial intelligence and speech technologies. The system enables the generation of automatic subtitles and simultaneous translations during classes, conferences, meetings and academic events.
The solution is particularly aimed at facilitating access to content for people with hearing impairments, international students and users who do not speak the language used during the session. In addition, it contributes to promoting linguistic inclusion and internationalisation in academic and professional settings.
SCRIBAL is based on advanced automatic speech recognition and natural language processing systems. The tool has been specifically trained and optimised for Catalan, incorporating different dialectal varieties and specialised academic terminology to improve transcription accuracy in university and technical contexts.
The solution has already been validated in real environments at the University of Barcelona, through pilot tests carried out in classes and academic events with dozens of users connected simultaneously. The project is currently at an advanced technological development stage (TRL 9), ready for implementation in educational institutions, companies and organisations.
According to the research team, one of SCRIBAL’s distinctive contributions is its ability to combine accessibility, internationalisation and linguistic preservation. The technology allows lecturers and speakers to communicate in their usual language while attendees receive automatic real-time translations, reducing language barriers without giving up the use of Catalan in academic environments.
The University of Barcelona, through the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation, its knowledge transfer office (KTO), is seeking collaborations with companies and institutions interested in AI-based accessibility, automatic transcription and simultaneous translation solutions.