Multilingual augmented reality glasses thrill audiences at Avignon Festival tryout.

The world’s first auto-translating opera glasses have been trialled at this year’s Avignon Festival and the initial verdict amongst spectators has declared them a palpable hit.

Carl de Poncins, head of a young startup surtitles company called Theatre in Paris, and business technology company Atos­ have unveiled the world’s first multilingual augmented reality glasses during performances of King Lear from July 4 to July 13 at the Palais de Papes. The high-tech glasses allowed individual audience members to choose surtitles in their native language (French, English and Mandarin) in order to understand the play. Flawlessly integrated with the show, the glasses are designed to display the surtitles to each audient at a pace that matches the performance and preserves the original meaning of the dialogue or text on stage.

^{Audiences trialing the new glasses}

“The Festival has always been a meeting point for creation, innovation and experimentation,” Paul Rodin, Managing Director of the Avignon Festival told Nasdaq. “These glasses not only demonstrate technological prowess, but are an accessibility tool, providing a simple way for cultures...