Real-time AI translation with Telnyx Inference

Language barriers create challenges that go beyond inconvenience. They can delay progress, disrupt communication, and limit opportunities. For businesses and developers, finding a way to communicate clearly across languages is essential. Telnyx Inference enables real-time AI translation by providing developers with the tools to instantly process and translate text or speech using powerful AI models.

Whether it’s delivering customer support in numerous languages or facilitating international business decisions, real-time AI translation has become an essential tool for building inclusive, globally accessible solutions. By leveraging the high-performance infrastructure of Telnyx Inference, developers can integrate large language models (LLMs) to process text and speech instantly, ensuring smooth, accurate communication.

This post will dive into the importance of real-time AI translation, how it works, and how Telnyx provides the tools needed to create exceptional multilingual experiences.

What is real-time AI translation?

Real-time AI translation is the process of converting spoken or written language from one language to another instantly. Unlike traditional translation methods, which often involve delays, real-time AI translation happens as the conversation unfolds, allowing people to communicate without interruption.

This capability relies on advanced AI models, which can process speech or text input, identify the source language, and deliver accurate translations in milliseconds. Real-time AI translation is particularly valuable for use cases like multilingual customer support, global business meetings, and applications where fast, precise communication is critical.

Building real-time AI translation with advanced LLMs

Clear communication across languages is essential. Whether you’re supporting customers in multiple languages or enabling cross-border collaboration, real-time AI translation eliminates delays and misunderstandings that disrupt meaningful interactions.

Telnyx Inference combines advanced large language models (LLMs) with speech-to-text (STT) and text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities integrated directly into our telephony services. This approach processes languages in real time, delivering accurate translations with minimal latency. Developers can rely on Telnyx Inference to build tools that are efficient, reliable, and ready for a wide range of applications.

Why Inference powers real-time AI translation

The accuracy and speed of real-time AI translation depend on the strength of the AI models running it. Telnyx Inference provides the backbone for AI-driven translation by allowing developers to leverage large language models (LLMs) built for high-speed text and speech processing.

With Telnyx’s dedicated AI infrastructure, businesses can:

• Deploy customizable AI models tailored to their industry or use case.
• Achieve sub-second response times for real-time communication.
• Run cost-effective, scalable translation workflows without expensive middleware.

Telnyx Inference is designed to provide developers with complete flexibility whether they need text-based translation, chatbot integration, or real-time voice AI processing. By combining Inference’s powerful LLM support with STT and TTS capabilities, businesses can build real-time AI translation systems that deliver accurate communication at scale.

How real-time AI translation works with Telnyx

Real-time AI translation combines multiple advanced technologies to create instant communication between languages. This process involves three core steps that work together to convert speech from one language to another in real time.

1. Converting speech to text

This process begins by capturing spoken input through a microphone or audio stream. STT technology converts this audio into written text using advanced speech recognition models.

This step is essential because the accuracy of the initial transcription directly impacts the quality of the translation. High-quality audio and codecs, such as Telnyx’s 16kHz HD voice, ensure precise transcription that forms the foundation of the translation process.

2. Translation with LLMs

Once the speech is transcribed into text, the next step is language translation. LLMs hosted on Telnyx Inference rapidly process text, identify the source language, and translate it into the desired target language in real time.

These AI models are trained on vast datasets, enabling them to provide contextually accurate translations and handle nuances like idioms, tone, and regional dialects. The result is a natural, intelligent translation tailored for real-time communication.

3. Text-to-speech output

Once translation is complete, the final step involves generating an output that can either be returned as text or converted back into speech using TTS technology. If the latter, this generates natural-sounding audio in the target language, allowing conversations to feel smooth and intuitive. With Telnyx’s low-latency infrastructure, this process happens almost instantly, ensuring that conversations remain uninterrupted.

This multi-step process relies on low-latency systems, optimized hardware, and robust AI models to achieve speed and accuracy. When these components work together, the result is a fluid, real-time translation experience that feels natural to users.

We’ve built a real-time AI translation demo to showcase how these technologies come together to power real-time interactions. From the initial speech capture to the final output, the demo highlights how Telnyx delivers accurate communication with minimal delay.

Why choose Telnyx for real-time AI translation?

Choosing the right tools and platform for real-time AI translation is critical to ensuring fast, accurate, and scalable results. While several AI providers offer translation tools, Telnyx delivers a flexible, API-driven approach that balances affordability, performance, and ease of integration.

OpenAI and ElevenLabs

Platforms like OpenAI and ElevenLabs offer speech-to-speech translation, which preserves voice intonation, emotion, and speaker characteristics. This approach excels in scenarios where expressiveness matters, such as entertainment, accessibility tools, and virtual assistants. However, it also comes with higher costs and may not be necessary for many business applications.

Telnyx’s approach

Inference is at the core of Telnyx’s real-time translation approach, providing fast, scalable, and cost-effective AI model execution. By leveraging Inference with STT and TTS, developers gain full control over multilingual communication workflows. While this method does not replicate voice characteristics, it delivers accurate translations at a fraction of the cost, making it ideal for customer support automation, business communications, chatbot and IVR systems, and global workforce collaboration.

For businesses needing expressive voice replication, Telnyx integrates with OpenAI’s speech-to-speech models, combining advanced voice processing with Telnyx’s low-latency infrastructure for faster, more responsive AI interactions. This means that developers can choose the best approach for their use case, whether it’s OpenAI’s expressive voice modeling or Inference’s highly efficient AI translation.

Advantages of Telnyx for AI translation

By leveraging Telnyx’s high-performance AI infrastructure and real-time processing capabilities, businesses can build scalable, cost-effective AI translation solutions. Here’s what sets Telnyx apart:

• Dedicated AI infrastructure: Powered by high-performance GPUs, Telnyx ensures low-latency processing for instant translations.
• Customizable LLMs: Developers can choose from open-source or proprietary language models, tailoring the translation experience to specific industries and applications.
• Integrated AI pipeline: Telnyx unifies STT, LLMs, and TTS into a fully connected translation workflow, eliminating the need for third-party vendors or middleware.
• Optimized audio processing: High-quality STT and TTS models, paired with Telnyx’s 16kHz HD voice, enhance transcription accuracy and natural-sounding speech output.
• Scalability without complexity: Telnyx’s API-driven platform allows businesses to scale AI translation workflows without complexity or operational bottlenecks.
• Cost-effective pricing: Telnyx’s usage-based pricing model offers a predictable and affordable solution compared to competitors, delivering enterprise-grade AI translation at a fraction of the cost.

With Telnyx, developers can focus on building innovative tools rather than managing fragmented systems or dealing with performance bottlenecks. By combining speed, accuracy, and flexibility in one platform, Telnyx makes it easier to bridge language gaps and unlock global opportunities.

Elevate real-time communication with Telnyx

Real-time AI translation is critical for breaking language barriers and enabling effective communication in multilingual environments. While building these tools can be complex, Telnyx Inference simplifies the process by combining advanced AI models with low-latency processing to deliver instant, accurate translations.

Developers gain full control over their AI translation stack, allowing them to scale, optimize, and deploy AI-powered translation for automated customer support, business communications, and AI-driven chat applications without the cost or complexity of alternative solutions.

By unifying high-performance language models, robust hardware, and flexible API integration, Telnyx eliminates the need for multiple vendors and provides a streamlined, cost-effective approach to real-time translation. Whether translating text or speech, Inference enables businesses to build fast, scalable solutions that adapt to any multilingual communication needs.