Behind the booth: what VivaTech 2026 visitors really asked us about real-time translation

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During VivaTech 2026, we presented Glot, our real-time translation solution for conferences, events and professional meetings, on our booth over four days of demos.

Visitor feedback shows how simultaneous translation is still perceived today, and what people really expect in terms of accuracy, latency and accessibility. Here's what four days of conversations taught us.

"What if the speaker has a strong accent?"

A visitor stopped by our booth with a very specific concern. She was considering using Glot at her company, but the executive who speaks at important meetings has a strong regional accent.

Her question wasn't "Does your solution work?" It was more like: "Is it going to glitch? Will the translation still be reliable with that accent?"

We found that remark telling, because it reflects exactly how people first encounter this technology. They don't picture an ideal case. They immediately think of the situations that have already given them trouble. That particular question only came up once during the show, but it summed up perfectly what visitors really want to know: whether a real-time translation solution is robust enough for their actual, everyday use.

"Will technical terms be translated correctly?"

If there's one question that came up again and again, it's this one. Visitors from industry, finance or other highly specialized sectors cared less about the number of languages available than about the quality of the vocabulary used.

One exchange stuck with us. An industry professional told us that every solution he had tested systematically translated the word four as oven. In his line of work, though, it's a furnace. A nuance that can sound trivial, until it completely changes the meaning of a technical presentation.

This point comes up constantly as soon as simultaneous translation for business is discussed. Good translation isn't just about swapping words from one language to another, it also has to understand context. That's exactly why Glot lets companies add custom glossaries: they can load in their own industry terminology so translations use the right terms, in the right context, a capability detailed further on our product page.

"Is this really happening live?"

This question made us smile more than once, because it was usually followed by the same surprised look once the captions appeared.

Visitors almost always expected a delay of several seconds. They assumed real-time translation had to come with a noticeable wait. At Glot, latency is around 2 seconds. That number sounds technical, but its effect is very concrete.

When the translation arrives almost at the same moment as the speech, you don't lose the thread of the talk. You stay in the speaker's rhythm, you react along with the rest of the room, and you follow the conversation naturally. Several visitors told us the same thing after the demo: they didn't expect the experience to feel that smooth.

"We only hold meetings in French..."

This was probably the most common objection. At the start of the conversation, many people assumed Glot was only for international conferences. Then the discussion often took a different turn.

We'd talk about live captions, deaf and hard-of-hearing attendees, people with learning differences, noisy environments, transcription, the summary generated after a meeting. And little by little, translation itself became almost secondary.

Because even when everyone speaks the same language, one question remains: how much information do we actually retain? Studies on memory show that people can forget up to 70% of what they heard within 24 hours without a structured way to recall it. In a professional setting, having a transcript and a summary is exactly what extends the value of a meeting well beyond the moment it ends.

Many visitors walked away realizing that a tool like Glot isn't just about translation.

"Do we need to install an app?"

Nope. Just scan a QR code. A few seconds later, the translation or captions are available directly in the browser. No app, no account to create, no equipment to hand out, exactly the flow we walk through step by step in our setup guide.

Over the course of the demos, we noticed that this simplicity struck visitors just as much as the technology itself.

What VivaTech taught us

We ran dozens of demos over four days and met around a hundred visitors. If there's one thing worth remembering, it's this: the question is no longer whether real-time translation works. Visitors already assume it does.

The real questions now are about accuracy, simplicity, accessibility and how it fits into everyday use. In the end, VivaTech wasn't just a chance to showcase Glot: it was also a remarkable window into how expectations are evolving around conferences, events and professional meetings. These conversations will certainly shape where we take the product next.