Vis-à-vis Mode — Face-to-Face Translation on a Shared Screen

February 2026

Picture the scene: you and someone who speaks a different language are sitting across a small table. Coffee between you, phone between the coffees. You've opened a translation app, picked the two languages, and started talking. The app is working — both sides of the conversation are transcribed and translated on screen. But from where the other person is sitting, every word is printed upside down. They're tilting their head, you're sliding the phone back and forth across the table, and the conversation keeps stalling while one of you plays waiter with the device. That awkward dance is the problem vis-à-vis mode solves.

With vis-à-vis mode on, the top row of the scrolling translation display is rotated 180 degrees so the person sitting opposite you reads their translations right-side up from their side of the table. You read the bottom row facing you, they read the top row facing them, and nobody has to move the phone. One shared screen, two right-side-up views, no head tilting.

What Is Vis-à-vis Mode?

Vis-à-vis is French for "face to face." In Live Translate Live, vis-à-vis mode rotates the top row of the scrolling translation display 180 degrees so the person sitting across the table sees their translations right-side up. Both speakers read their own side of the screen without craning their neck, turning the device around, or moving to sit next to each other. Each person simply reads the row of text that faces them.

It's a small feature in the literal sense — one toggle, one CSS transform — but it's the difference between a translation app that assumes one viewer and one that's actually built for two people across a table. For a full walkthrough of a typical face-to-face session, see how to translate a face-to-face conversation.

How It Works

The Live Translate Live display has two rows of scrolling text — one for each language. With vis-à-vis mode enabled:

• The top row is flipped upside down — rotated 180° so it reads correctly from the opposite side of the table.
• The bottom row stays normal — readable from the near side of the table.
• Both rows scroll simultaneously — the conversation flows naturally for both readers.
• The scroll direction of the flipped row is reversed so that, from the upside-down reader's perspective, text still enters from one side and exits from the other the way they expect.

Place a phone, tablet, or laptop flat on the table between you. Each person reads the row of scrolling translation that faces them. It's like having a live interpreter built into the table — except the interpreter doesn't need a chair.

Before and After: What Changes

The easiest way to understand what vis-à-vis mode does is to compare the two experiences directly.

Without vis-à-vis mode. You put the phone flat on the table, screen up, pointing the top of the screen away from yourself so your transcript reads the right way. Your conversation partner on the other side of the table now sees everything — including their own translations — upside down. They tilt their head. They lean over the phone. They pick it up and rotate it, then put it back down the other way, which now means you're reading upside down. After a minute of this you either end up craning over the screen together from the same side (defeating the point of two separate translation rows) or giving up and just handing the phone back and forth between sentences (breaking the flow of the conversation entirely). A real-time translator that forces you to stop and pass the device is just a slower version of typing into Google Translate.

With vis-à-vis mode. Phone flat on the table, you both stay in your seats. You watch your language scroll across the bottom row in front of you. They watch their language scroll across the top row in front of them — right-side up from their angle. Neither of you touches the device once it's placed. You talk, it scrolls, and the conversation moves at the pace of the conversation instead of the pace of the app. That's the whole point.

Device-Specific Setup

Vis-à-vis mode works on any device that can run a browser, but the experience varies a lot depending on what you put on the table. The short version: phones work, tablets are the sweet spot, laptops are awkward but possible, and wall-mounted screens should have vis-à-vis turned off entirely.

Phone flat on a table

This is the most common setup and the one vis-à-vis mode is designed around first. A modern phone — anywhere from a 5.5-inch compact up to a 6.7-inch Pro Max — placed screen-up in the middle of a café table gives both readers about half the screen each. On a 5.5-inch phone that's a single short line per side; on a 6.7-inch phone it's comfortable for most readers. The main constraint is font size. Bump the text up one or two notches in the marquee controls; the default is optimized for solo reading on a held phone, not for two people leaning in from opposite ends.

Tablet propped or flat

Tablets are the sweet spot. An iPad Mini on its side fills both rows with a comfortable line length, an iPad or 10-inch Android tablet gives you room for longer phrases before they scroll off, and the viewing angle is forgiving enough that even propped at a slight tilt, neither reader complains. If you're running more than a five-minute conversation — a doctor's appointment, a rental agreement, a family meal — the tablet is the device you want on the table. Our recommendation: tablet, flat, center of the table, vis-à-vis on, font size turned up one step from default.

Laptop with the lid fully open flat

Technically possible, rarely ideal. Most laptops don't open past roughly 180 degrees without strain on the hinge, and the screens that do — a few 2-in-1s and certain ThinkPads — are usually small enough that a tablet would do the same job better. If you're genuinely stuck with a laptop on a conference table, turn vis-à-vis on, tilt the screen as flat as the hinge allows, and accept that one of you will be reading at an angle. In practice this is a fallback; if you do face-to-face translation more than occasionally, keep a cheap tablet in the drawer for this specific purpose.

Two-monitor streaming setup

If each speaker has their own display — two laptops on a conference table, or a streaming setup with one monitor angled toward each speaker — vis-à-vis mode should be off. Each screen is viewed from one direction only, so flipping a row just turns one of the two translations upside down for no benefit. Pointing each display at its speaker and keeping both rows right-side up is the setup that makes sense.

Smart TV or wall projector

Turn vis-à-vis off. A mounted display is viewed from a single direction by everyone in the room — audience, students, conference attendees — and flipping one row means half the viewers are reading upside down from across the room, which was never the problem to solve in the first place. For this kind of setup, see the scrolling marquee on a smart TV or OBS guide; it covers the presentation-style configuration where both rows stay right-side up and the whole room reads together.

Readability Trade-offs

Reading upside down is not free. Studies on inverted text reading speed generally find readers are 10–15% slower on flipped text than on normal text, and the effect is larger for unfamiliar scripts and longer lines. Vis-à-vis mode is a worthwhile trade because it replaces no reading at all (or constantly rotating the device) with slightly slower reading — but there are a few things you can do to shrink that gap.

• Bigger font. Upside-down reading benefits disproportionately from larger text. Bump the font size up one or two steps in the marquee controls.
• Shorter chunks. The marquee already breaks translations into scrolling segments; pause briefly between thoughts so your partner's segment finishes scrolling before the next one starts piling up behind it.
• Scroll direction matters. The top row's scroll direction is reversed along with the flip, so from the upside-down reader's perspective, new text still enters from one consistent edge. Don't override this — the direction is flipped on purpose.
• Backlight and glare. A phone flat on a table points its screen straight up at whatever ceiling light happens to be there. On a café table, this is usually fine. In a fluorescent-lit office or a restaurant with downlights, a small tilt or stand makes a noticeable difference.

Orientation Tips

A few details that come up after a dozen real conversations with this mode on:

• Center the device between the two readers. Not closer to yourself "so you can reach it" — equal distance for both. You won't need to reach it once the conversation starts.
• Use a small stand if you have one. A cheap folding phone or tablet stand that tilts the screen 15–20 degrees toward each reader in turn is still usable in vis-à-vis mode and dramatically reduces overhead glare on a flat table.
• Push-to-talk button placement. If you're using manual push-to-talk rather than always-on listening, make sure the button is reachable from your side without rotating the device. On a phone, "your" row should be the bottom row, so keep the device oriented with your side's controls nearest to you.
• Volume. If the device will also play any audio (it mostly won't in vis-à-vis mode, since the display is doing the work), point the speaker grille away from the quieter person rather than toward them.
• Agree who speaks which language. Before you start, confirm with your partner which row is theirs. Ten seconds of "that's your side, this is mine" saves a confused minute halfway in.

When to Use Vis-à-vis Mode

Any situation where two people sit across from each other with a shared screen between them:

• Restaurant conversations — place a phone flat on the table and talk over dinner.
• Doctor-patient consultations — set a tablet on the desk between doctor and patient.
• Business negotiations — both parties read translations across a conference table.
• Parent-teacher meetings — bridge the language gap with a shared screen on the teacher's desk.
• Family dinners — grandparents and grandchildren reading from opposite sides.
• Service counters — a hotel, bank, or government office with a tablet between staff and visitor.
• Language exchange practice — partners at a café, each glancing at their own side for the words they're still learning.

The common thread: two people, one device between them, both needing to read. If that's your setup, vis-à-vis mode is the right default.

When to Turn It Off

Vis-à-vis mode is enabled by default, but there are specific situations where you'll want to toggle it off.

• Side-by-side on a couch. Watching a movie together with translated dialogue, or helping a family member through a form on their phone — you're both viewing the screen from the same side, so both rows should read in the same direction.
• Conference-room wall display. A smart TV or projector on a wall is viewed by the whole room from one direction. Flipping a row makes it unreadable for everyone.
• Streaming and broadcast overlay. If you're using Live Translate Live as an OBS browser source or a streaming caption overlay, every viewer watches from the front. Vis-à-vis off.
• Classroom setup. Teacher at the front, students facing the same board or screen. All readers are in the same orientation.
• Walking around. Holding the phone yourself in a store or on the street; the other person will be in front of you or beside you, not across from you. Most of these cases are better handled without a shared display at all.

Toggling vis-à-vis mode is a single tap in the menu — on when you're across from someone, off when you're beside them or looking at a wall. The change applies to the scrolling display instantly; you don't have to restart the session.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does vis-à-vis mode cost extra credits?

No. Vis-à-vis mode is purely a display setting — it flips one row of text on your screen and changes nothing about the speech-recognition or translation pipeline. Credits are consumed based on how much you speak (transcription seconds and translated characters), not on which display options you have enabled. Leave it on, turn it off, toggle it mid-conversation; the billing is identical.

Can I use it on a phone, or is a tablet better?

Both work. A phone is fine for a quick five-minute conversation — ordering food, checking into a hotel, asking a short question. For a longer conversation where both readers need to be comfortable (a medical appointment, a meeting, a family dinner), a tablet is noticeably better because the line length is longer and the font can stay comfortably large. If you do face-to-face translation often, a cheap 8–10 inch tablet is the single best piece of hardware you can add. See the features page for more on the display options.

Is the upside-down row harder to read?

Slightly, yes — inverted text is typically read about 10–15% slower than upright text. In practice this is less noticeable than you'd think because the scrolling marquee is already showing text at a paced speed, not making you read at your own maximum. If a reader struggles, bump the font size up one step and the gap effectively disappears. The alternative — not using vis-à-vis mode — is "reading upside down with no scrolling help at all," which is quite a bit harder.

Can I flip the bottom row instead of the top?

The feature is built around flipping the top row because that's the convention most people expect when a device is lying flat pointing "away" from the primary user. If you'd prefer the opposite — if, say, you physically rotate the device so the top is closest to you — just rotate the phone 180 degrees before placing it. The rows themselves are tied to language assignment, not to physical orientation, so "your row" and "their row" stay consistent. We don't currently offer a separate toggle to flip only the bottom row.

Try Vis-à-vis Mode

Vis-à-vis mode is included with every Live Translate Live session — no extra cost, no setup. It's enabled by default, so just sign in, choose your two languages, and place your device on the table. Both speakers will see their translations scrolling right-side up from their side. If you're new to the full setup, the face-to-face conversation walkthrough covers it end to end; for wall-display or streaming use cases, the marquee on smart TV and OBS guide is the better starting point.

Translation credits start at $1 for 15 minutes. Try for $1 — no subscription.

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