https://jason-grey.com/tags/ml/Recent content in Ml on jason greyHugoenFri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://jason-grey.com/posts/2026/translation-overlay/Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://jason-grey.com/posts/2026/translation-overlay/<p>I am working with more Spanish-speaking folks lately — and wanted live subtitles without routing audio through a cloud service. So I built a hack.</p> <p><a href="https://github.com/jt55401/translation-overlay" class="external-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener">translation-overlay</a> captures system audio from PipeWire, pipes it through a local translation model, and renders the output as floating subtitles on top of all windows.</p> <pre tabindex="0"><code>System Audio → PipeWire capture → ML translation engine → Subtitle overlay </code></pre><p>It&rsquo;s two Python scripts duct-taped together with a shell wrapper. <code>caption_engine.py</code> grabs audio from your default PipeWire sink monitor via <code>pw-record</code>, runs it through one of three translation engines, and writes text lines to stdout. <code>subtitle_overlay.py</code> reads those lines and renders them as a transparent, always-on-top Qt overlay with typewriter reveal and smooth scrolling.</p>