24-Language Live AI Transcription — The European Parliament's Competitively Tendered Speech Translation Service

The European Parliament conducts its plenary debates in 24 official EU languages, historically relying on human interpretation and same-day transcript production. To speed up multilingual access and improve accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing members and citizens, Parliament ran an 18-month competitive tender for an AI-based live transcription and translation system, testing prototypes from three rival teams — Microsoft (with speech scientists Olivier Nano and Chris Wendt), Translated (whose "human-in-the-loop" system could fold corrections into live output in under a second) and a consortium of RWS, CEDAT85 and Bertin IT.
In November 2021, Parliament confirmed the RWS/CEDAT85/Bertin IT consortium's Language Weaver-based platform as the winner, having "ranked first throughout" the evaluation. The deployed system automatically transcribes and translates spoken floor debate in real time across all 24 languages, displaying subtitles on-screen for members — including those with hearing impairments — while accelerating the release of official multilingual transcripts to the public.
Evidence caveat — Neither Parliament nor the winning consortium has published usage statistics, translation-accuracy figures, or citizen-reach numbers for the live service; the public record documents the tender process, the technical design, and the selection outcome, not a post-deployment performance evaluation.

Read the full analysis: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211124005439/en/RWS-Wins-Deal-to-Provide-European-Parliament-With-Live-Translation-and-Transcription-Service