{
  "claim": "The headline \"LAAL 2.8s → 2.3s\" is one column of a four-column figure, and the baseline is Qwen's own previous generation, not a competitor. Read across the row instead: Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate moved half a second of lag and 2.7 points of translation quality in the same direction at the same time, which is the opposite of how the simultaneous-interpretation trade normally runs.",
  "method": "Every figure transcribed from the FLEURS panel published in the Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate release post on 2026-09-18. Qwen states the evaluation covers 19 languages (zh, en, ja, ko, ar, cs, de, es, fr, id, it, ms, nl, pl, pt, ru, th, tr, vi) and 70 directions. 70 is exactly the number of directions into and out of English and Chinese among 19 languages (18×2 into the two pivots, 18×2 out of them, minus the en↔zh pair counted twice); all 342 ordered pairs would be the alternative, so no direction in this evaluation has a non-pivot language at both ends.",
  "source": "https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen3.8-livetranslate",
  "captured": "2026-09-19",
  "note": "Each cell is a single number aggregated over all 70 directions. No per-language or per-direction breakdown was published, so the spread — which is where a verb-final source language such as Japanese, Korean or Turkish would show up against a verb-medial one — is not recoverable from the release. Qwen does disclose one uneven denominator, against its own interest: Seed LiveInterpret 2.0's UTMOS covers only the 26 directions it supports while every other system covers all 70. The release does not state whether LAAL was measured on the emitted text stream or on the synthesized audio, and for a speech-to-speech system those are different numbers.",
  "columns": [
    { "key": "system", "label": "system" },
    { "key": "comet", "label": "xCOMET-XXL ↑", "align": "right", "mono": true },
    { "key": "laal", "label": "LAAL s ↓", "align": "right", "mono": true },
    { "key": "wer", "label": "ASR WER % ↓", "align": "right", "mono": true },
    { "key": "utmos", "label": "UTMOS ↑", "align": "right", "mono": true },
    { "key": "open", "label": "weights" }
  ],
  "rows": [
    {
      "system": "Qwen3.8-LiveTranslate",
      "comet": "85.7",
      "laal": "2.3",
      "wer": "6.6",
      "utmos": "4.0",
      "open": "API only"
    },
    {
      "system": "Qwen3.5-LiveTranslate (the 2.8s baseline)",
      "comet": "83.0",
      "laal": "2.8",
      "wer": "not shown",
      "utmos": "3.9",
      "open": "API only"
    },
    {
      "system": "Seed LiveInterpret 2.0",
      "comet": "79.4",
      "laal": "2.8",
      "wer": "7.0",
      "utmos": "3.0 (26/70 dirs)",
      "open": "API only, paper published"
    },
    {
      "system": "Gemini 3.5 Live translate",
      "comet": "73.5",
      "laal": "2.5",
      "wer": "11.4",
      "utmos": "3.4",
      "open": "API only"
    },
    {
      "system": "GPT-Realtime-Translate",
      "comet": "65.2",
      "laal": "3.1",
      "wer": "not shown",
      "utmos": "3.4",
      "open": "API only"
    }
  ]
}