How “Real” is Your Real-Time Simultaneous Speech-to-Text Translation System?

Sara Papi, Peter Polák, Dominik Macháček, Ondřej Bojar


Abstract
Simultaneous speech-to-text translation (SimulST) translates source-language speech into target-language text concurrently with the speaker’s speech, ensuring low latency for better user comprehension. Despite its intended application to unbounded speech, most research has focused on human pre-segmented speech, simplifying the task and overlooking significant challenges. This narrow focus, coupled with widespread terminological inconsistencies, is limiting the applicability of research outcomes to real-world applications, ultimately hindering progress in the field. Our extensive literature review of 110 papers not only reveals these critical issues in current research but also serves as the foundation for our key contributions. We: 1) define the steps and core components of a SimulST system, proposing a standardized terminology and taxonomy; 2) conduct a thorough analysis of community trends; and 3) offer concrete recommendations and future directions to bridge the gaps in existing literature, from evaluation frameworks to system architectures, for advancing the field towards more realistic and effective SimulST solutions.
Anthology ID:
2025.tacl-1.14
Volume:
Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Volume 13
Month:
Year:
2025
Address:
Cambridge, MA
Venue:
TACL
SIG:
Publisher:
MIT Press
Note:
Pages:
281–313
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-07/2025.tacl-1.14/
DOI:
10.1162/tacl_a_00740
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Sara Papi, Peter Polák, Dominik Macháček, and Ondřej Bojar. 2025. How “Real” is Your Real-Time Simultaneous Speech-to-Text Translation System?. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 13:281–313.
Cite (Informal):
How “Real” is Your Real-Time Simultaneous Speech-to-Text Translation System? (Papi et al., TACL 2025)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/corrections-2025-07/2025.tacl-1.14.pdf