Documentation

Setu lets two people who don't share a language hold a spoken conversation. One speaks; the other hears it in their own language a beat later — as text and voice.

Run a conversation Settings Languages Privacy Limits Troubleshooting

Run a conversation

You need two devices — one per person. Phones are fine; earbuds help but aren't required.

Open the demo. Both people open the join page on their own device.
Pick a shared room code. Agree on any word (e.g. table7) and both type the same one.
Choose your language. Each person sets the language they speak.
Join & talk. Tap Join & listen. When the top bar shows connected and you see the other person appear, just speak — a beat later they read and hear it in their language, and their reply comes back in yours.

Tip: the conversation shows the other person's original words quoted, with your language in bold as the line you read. Your own turns appear on the right.

Settings

Tap the ⚙ gear any time. Everything is saved on your device and applied the next time you connect.

Setting	What it does
I speak	The language you talk in (used for speech-to-text).
I want to hear	The language translations are delivered in — usually the same, but you can, say, speak Hindi and read English.
Hear translations aloud	Turn the spoken voice on or off (text-only mode).
Turn sensitivity / end-of-utterance silence	How eagerly Setu decides you've finished a sentence. Raise the silence if it cuts you off; lower it for snappier turns.
Server URL	Advanced: point the app at a different bridge without a redeploy.

Languages

Six languages, any pair, either direction: English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi translate and speak; Tamil translates as text (a Tamil voice is on the way). Indic-to-Indic pairs translate through English internally.

Privacy

No recordings. Your audio is transcribed and immediately discarded — never written to disk.
No stored transcripts. The words you say are not kept on the server; the running conversation lives only in the two browsers and disappears when you close the tab.
No account. There's no sign-up and no profile.
Each turn is sent to a speech and (only for mixed-language turns) a translation provider to do its one job; translation of pure-Indic and English turns runs on the operator's own machine.

Limits & what to expect

Two people per room. A third join is turned away.
Interpreter pace. Expect roughly 3–5 seconds per turn. It's turn-taking, not talking over each other.
Sessions are time-boxed and idle rooms close on their own — this is a beta running on a single machine.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Try
Stuck on disconnected / a close code shows	Hard-refresh the page (pull down / clear site data) so you get the latest version, then Join again.
The other person never appears	Check you both typed the exact same room code, and both tapped Join.
A turn didn't come through	Pause about a second after you finish speaking so Setu can detect the end of your sentence.
Echo / it hears itself	Use earbuds, or turn on text-only mode in ⚙.