Terms of Service

The BabelSpeech service (the “Service”) is operated by Joel Rossier, 1963 Vetroz, Suisse (the “Operator”), who can be reached at info@babelspee.ch. It is available through the website babelspee.ch, its subdomains, its programming interfaces and the BabelSpeech Desktop application.

These terms of service (the “Terms”) govern any use of the Service. They apply to anyone who creates an account or uses the Service as an organiser (the “User”), and to anyone who follows a translation feed through a public link (the “Viewer”). By creating an account, using the Service or opening a session link, you accept the Terms without reservation. If you do not accept the Terms, do not use the Service.

Terms and conditions of the User or of third parties do not apply, even where the Operator does not expressly object to them.

The Service lets an organiser broadcast, in real time, speech captured during an event (conference, meeting, worship service, class, etc.) as text automatically translated into one or more target languages and, optionally, as synthesised audio. Viewers access the translated feed through a public link, without creating an account.

Transcription, translation and speech synthesis are performed by artificial-intelligence models supplied by a third-party provider (see art. 6). The Service is an automated assistance tool: under no circumstances does it constitute a professional interpreting or translation service.

The Service is in its launch phase and evolves continuously. The Operator may at any time modify, restrict, add or remove features, supported languages or technical limits (for example the maximum duration of a session or the number of target languages), without notice and without this giving rise to any compensation.

• The User must be of legal age and have full legal capacity, or act on behalf of an organisation they are authorised to bind.
• The information provided at sign-up must be accurate and kept up to date. The e-mail address must be verified to activate the account.
• The User is solely responsible for keeping their credentials confidential and for any activity carried out from their account, including from the desktop application connected to it. Connected devices can be revoked at any time from the “Account” page.
• An account is personal and may not be transferred. Opening several accounts to accumulate free credits is prohibited.
• The User shall inform the Operator without delay of any unauthorised use of their account.

Use of the Service is metered in credits. Unless otherwise indicated in the Service, one credit corresponds to one minute of session for one target language in text mode; enabling audio output doubles the consumption for each language concerned. Credits are debited for each elapsed minute of session, for each active target language, whether or not any speech is actually spoken. A session is automatically stopped when the balance is exhausted or when the maximum session duration is reached.

Credits are purchased in prepaid packs, in the currency offered, through the payment provider Stripe. The prices displayed at the time of purchase are the prices charged; they include any applicable taxes, where relevant. The Operator may change its prices at any time for future purchases. No payment-card data passes through the Operator.

Purchased credits are non-refundable, non-exchangeable, non-transferable to another account, and cannot be converted into cash. This applies in particular to credits consumed during a session whose quality, latency or availability was deemed unsatisfactory, and to unused credits when the User closes their account. Any goodwill gesture remains at the Operator’s sole discretion.

Purchased credits do not expire as long as the account exists. Free credits (for example those granted at sign-up) are a gratuitous gesture: the Operator may change their amount or conditions, or revoke them, at any time, in particular in case of abuse.

In the event of a payment dispute (“chargeback”) or a reversed payment, the Operator may withdraw the corresponding credits and suspend the account until the situation is resolved.

The User undertakes to use the Service in compliance with applicable law. In particular, the User is responsible for:

• informing the persons whose voice is captured (speakers, participants) that their words are transmitted to a third-party automated-processing provider and, where applicable law so requires, obtaining their consent;
• ensuring they hold the necessary rights to the content broadcast (speeches, materials, protected works, music, etc.);
• not broadcasting content that is unlawful, defamatory, hateful or infringes the rights of third parties;
• protecting public session links: anyone with the link can follow the translated feed. The Operator has no control over how these links are shared;
• not using the Service in situations where a translation error could cause significant bodily, financial or legal harm (in particular: medical procedures, judicial or administrative proceedings, emergencies, contract negotiations, safety instructions) without independent human verification;
• not attempting to circumvent the credit-metering mechanisms, to access the systems without authorisation, to overload the infrastructure, or to reverse-engineer the Service;
• not reselling the Service or integrating it into a third-party offering without written agreement.

The Operator may suspend or close, without notice, any account used in breach of the Terms, without refund of the remaining credits and without prejudice to any other action.

The functional core of the Service — speech recognition, translation and speech synthesis — relies on the real-time models and programming interfaces provided by OpenAI. The captured audio is streamed continuously to OpenAI’s servers, located outside Switzerland, and processed in accordance with OpenAI’s terms and policies, over which the Operator has no control.

The Service also depends on other providers, in particular Stripe (payments), an infrastructure host and an e-mail delivery provider.

The Operator has no control over the availability, performance, quality, pricing, usage limits, terms or evolution of these third-party services. Any outage, degradation, change, restriction, price increase or discontinuation of any of these services may affect, interrupt or make impossible the provision of the Service, at any time and without notice, without the Operator incurring any liability and without any right to compensation.

The Service produces transcriptions and translations generated automatically by artificial-intelligence models. These results are provided for information only and without any warranty of accuracy, completeness, fidelity or fitness for a particular purpose.

The User and the Viewers acknowledge and accept in particular that:

• the system may make mistakes, omit passages, produce misinterpretations, invent wording that does not appear in the original speech (“hallucinations”) or cut a sentence short;
• proper nouns (people, places, organisations, brands, products), numbers, dates, amounts, acronyms, technical terms, idiomatic expressions, puns and cultural references are particularly likely to be mistranscribed or mistranslated;
• quality depends heavily on factors outside the Operator’s control: microphone and connection quality, background noise, accents, speech rate, overlapping speakers, language switches mid-speech, specialised terminology;
• a delay (latency) exists between the speech and the display or playback of the translation, and may vary during a session;
• the synthesised voice, when enabled, reproduces neither the intonation nor the intent of the speaker;
• the underlying models evolve: quality may vary from one session to the next, for better or for worse.

The Service is no substitute for a professional interpreter or translator. No decision, statement, commitment or action should be based on a translation provided by the Service without independent verification. Only the original speech is authoritative.

The Operator endeavours, within its reasonable means (“best effort”), to keep the Service accessible and functional. It is bound by no obligation of result and by no guaranteed service level (SLA): no availability rate, response time, maximum latency or recovery time is guaranteed.

The Service may be interrupted, slowed down or degraded at any time, in particular due to maintenance (planned or not), technical incidents, third-party provider outages, cyber-attacks, capacity limitations or force majeure. The Operator does not guarantee that a session can be started or completed.

The Service is operated by a private individual, without a permanent support team. No response time to support requests is guaranteed. Users are strongly advised to test the Service under real conditions before any event and to plan a fallback (interpreter, written materials, etc.) for any event where translation matters.

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Operator disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including any warranty of quality, conformity, absence of defects, availability, accuracy, non-infringement or fitness for a particular purpose. The Operator does not warrant that the Service will meet the User’s expectations, that it will operate without interruption or error, or that defects will be corrected.

To the fullest extent permitted by Swiss law, the Operator’s liability, whatever its legal basis (contractual, tortious or otherwise), is excluded for any indirect or consequential damage, including: loss of profit or revenue, loss of business, loss of opportunity, damage to reputation or image, loss or corruption of data, cost of a replacement solution, damage resulting from an erroneous, incomplete, late or missing translation, and any damage resulting from an interruption or unavailability of the Service or of the third-party services on which it depends.

In all cases where the Operator’s liability cannot be excluded, it is limited, for all damages combined, to the total amount actually paid by the User to the Operator during the twelve (12) months preceding the event giving rise to the damage. No liability is assumed towards Viewers, who use the Service free of charge and at their own risk.

These exclusions and limitations do not apply in case of wilful misconduct or gross negligence by the Operator (art. 100 para. 1 of the Swiss Code of Obligations), to bodily injury, or in other cases where the law mandatorily prohibits such a limitation.

The Operator is not liable for the acts or omissions of its third-party providers (art. 101 CO, to the extent permitted), for content broadcast by the User, or for the use that the User, Viewers or third parties make of the translations produced.

The User shall indemnify and hold the Operator harmless against any claim, action, damage, fine or cost (including reasonable legal fees) brought by third parties or authorities and arising from the User’s use of the Service, in particular from the content broadcast, from the failure to inform or obtain the consent of the persons whose voice is captured, from the infringement of third-party rights or from a breach of the Terms.

The Service, its code, interface, brand and documentation are the property of the Operator or its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property law. The User is granted a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable right of use, limited to the duration of their use of the Service.

The User retains all rights to the content they broadcast through the Service (audio, speech). The User grants the Operator, and its technical providers, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use this content solely to the extent necessary to provide the Service (transmission, processing, display to Viewers).

The generated transcriptions and translations are made available to the User without warranty as to their originality or their free use. The User uses them under their sole responsibility. This content is not retained by the Operator (see the privacy policy).

The processing of personal data is described in the privacy policy, which forms an integral part of the Terms. In short: the captured audio, transcriptions and translations are not recorded by the Operator; only account, billing, usage (duration, languages) and technical-log data are retained.

The Terms apply from the creation of the account and for an indefinite period. The User may stop using the Service at any time and request the deletion of their account by writing to info@babelspee.ch. Deleting the account results in the permanent loss of the remaining credits, without refund.

The Operator may suspend or close an account with immediate effect in case of breach of the Terms, abusive or fraudulent use, payment dispute, prolonged inactivity (more than 24 months) or at the request of a competent authority.

The Operator may permanently discontinue all or part of the Service with reasonable notice, communicated by e-mail or on the website, unless the discontinuation is imposed by a third party (in particular the discontinuation of a service on which the Service depends) or by a legal or technical constraint. In the event of a permanent discontinuation at the Operator’s initiative, the Operator shall refund, upon written request made within thirty (30) days of the announcement, the value of purchased credits (excluding free credits) not consumed, pro rata to the price paid. No other compensation is due.

The Operator may change the Terms at any time. The current version is published on the website with its update date. Material changes are communicated to Users holding an account by e-mail or through a notification in the Service at least thirty (30) days before they take effect, except where a change is required by law or by a third-party provider. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the amended Terms; otherwise, the User may stop using the Service.

• If any provision of the Terms is void or unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in force; the provision concerned is replaced by a valid provision whose economic effect comes closest to it.
• The Operator’s failure to enforce a provision of the Terms does not constitute a waiver of the right to enforce it later.
• The Operator may assign the Terms and the contractual relationship to an entity taking over the operation of the Service, subject to informing the User.
• Communications between the Operator and the User are validly made by e-mail to the address registered on the account.
• The Terms are drafted in French. This English version is a translation provided for convenience only. In case of inconsistency, ambiguity or dispute between the versions, the French version prevails.

The Terms and any relationship between the Operator and the User or the Viewers are governed by Swiss law, to the exclusion of conflict-of-law rules and of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG).

The exclusive place of jurisdiction is the Operator’s domicile, canton of Valais, Switzerland, subject to mandatory places of jurisdiction provided by law, in particular in favour of consumers.