Build Your Own Real-Time Translator
A practical guide to building a near real-time voice translator using streaming LLM, Deepgram, and WebSocket — with full code examples.
4 articles
Part 1. Build Your Own Real-Time Translator - Intent-First, Breaking the Silence
Why existing voice translators break conversation flow, and how to set up the foundation for a real-time translator with Deepgram, FastAPI, and WebSocket.
Part 2. Build Your Own Real-Time Translator - LLM Streaming for 500ms
The core implementation: dual prompts for speed vs quality, streaming JSON extraction, debounce logic, and progressive frontend display — with full code.
Part 3. Build Your Own Real-Time Translator - Ollama, LM Studio, and Home GPU
Local LLM inference on RTX 3060: Ollama setup and VRAM crash, LM Studio 0.4.0 headless CLI, lock mechanisms for parallel requests, mobile LLM feasibility research, and a guide for adapting to any language pair.
Part 4 (Appendix). Build Your Own Real-Time Translator - TTS via Bluetooth
Implementation notes on adding text-to-speech to the translation pipeline: Web Speech API code, mobile browser workarounds, Bluetooth audio routing, and the browser limitations that led toward a native app.