Understanding Hybrid Events: A Guide to Leveraging Language Translation Services for Seamless Multilingual Experiences

What Is a Hybrid Event?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people have had to leap in their knowledge and skills in terms of technology. Despite all the difficulties, international companies and organizations were able to find solutions in the form of multilingual virtual meetings that allowed them to continue their fruitful work while staying in touch with their colleagues and partners.

After the peak of the pandemic, the world began to reopen. Meetings and events began to take place live again but using improved technologies. After 2020, hybrid events that combine reality and virtuality have become popular.

What is a hybrid event? This is a meeting, conference, workshop, etc., which combines a live and a virtual audience with the help of virtual conference platforms. Hybrid events became a flexible and inclusive way to connect with worldwide audiences for businesses that wanted to continue connecting with large international audiences in person and virtually.

During a hybrid event, speakers present simultaneously to live and remote audiences via webinars, chat, or virtual reality platforms. This allows participants to choose whether to attend the event in person or stay home.

One of the most common challenges for organizers of hybrid events is to ensure effective communication in different languages, considering the cultural aspects of the participants. That is why professional interpretation and translation services play an important role in eliminating all communication barriers, allowing everyone, present or virtually, to understand the speaker’s speech and be involved fully.

In this article, together with TLD, we will analyze all the important aspects of hybrid events and offer multilingual solutions for communicating with an international audience.

hybrid events

Difference Between Physical, Virtual and Hybrid Events

Each company or organization chooses the most appropriate type of event to communicate with its audience. There are currently three main types of events: physical, virtual, and hybrid. Each has advantages and disadvantages and offers a unique experience that organizers use to achieve different goals.

Various events organized for international audiences require responsible interpretation and translation to ensure quality communication and information delivery without language and cultural barriers.

Let’s look at each type in more detail and explore their effective interpretation and translation capabilities.

Physical Event

Physical events are meetings, conferences, etc., in such physical spaces as halls, conference rooms, and other places that can accommodate a certain number of people. Such events are an excellent opportunity for live communication and networking. Physical events have advantages over other events, such as personalized attention and personal interaction. Still, this type of event can be challenging in terms of finding a suitable location for everyone and travel and accommodation costs if the event occurs in another city or country.

Organizers hire professional interpreters to eliminate language barriers during international physical events, which convey the speaker’s message clearly to the target audience. Translated printed materials and presentations are often provided as well. This approach ensures that all participants fully immerse themselves in the content and discussions, regardless of language level.

Virtual Event

Virtual events are held in cyberspace using video conferencing and chat platforms. It is an affordable option that does not require large expenses and offers flexibility in time and location.

Compared to physical events, virtual events allow you to save on travel and accommodation costs while providing the opportunity to connect with colleagues and partners from different countries quickly and conveniently. This type of event does not require a lot of preparation, but it is important to have a good internet connection to avoid delays or lags.

A quality and trusted interpretation and translation service is still important during multilingual virtual meetings. Some video conferencing platforms already include simultaneous translation features, but cultural considerations are absent. Professional agencies are hired to provide certified interpretation services for clear communication, which will consider all language and cultural differences in real-time, avoiding misunderstandings and confusion.

Hybrid Event

As we already mentioned, hybrid events use a combination of in-person and digital elements tailored to each audience for optimal experiences. Recently, they have become increasingly popular due to their interesting and effective way of disseminating information and communicating with various audiences.

Hybrid events combine the best qualities of physical and virtual types. They provide live communication while reaching global reach through virtual platforms, making them an ideal option for maximizing participation and inclusion.

The need for professional interpretation and translation services does not disappear during a multilingual hybrid meeting. On the contrary, it is quite acute because it requires innovative solutions and advanced technologies. In a hybrid event, planner organizers often consider remote simultaneous interpretation, which allows for real-time interpretation for both participants in reality and cyberspace.

All three types of events have their purpose and are used by companies to achieve different goals. Hybrid meetings, supported by high-quality interpretation services, in turn, allow businesses to reach a large number of people while ensuring live communication and emotions.

If you are planning a hybrid event and want to avoid language and cultural barriers, consider the On-Demand Interpreting Platform Connected Care by The Language Doctors. This communication hub lets you quickly find an interpreter for your events. Connected Care provides highly skilled professionals for hybrid events that accurately convey the speaker’s message to your audience. Organizers will have access to technical support to help integrate the platform’s interpretation services into the organization of hybrid events. Try Connected Care’s On-Demand Interpreting services today and ensure an enjoyable and professional experience for every participant!

Why Are Hybrid Events Important?

Combining the best features of physical and virtual meetings, hybrid events have become an innovative component of modern event strategies.

The idea of hybrid events is not new. Have you ever watched the Oscars? Or maybe you were rooting for your favorite football team while watching a live game? These are also hybrid events because they unite people into a large community through live interactions and virtually meeting people.

Once hybrid events began to be used for business meetings or conferences, they acquired even more important qualities and functions that organizers use to achieve company goals.

  • Increased engagement. With the ability to engage many people from around the globe at once, hybrid events support both face-to-face interaction and virtual discussions and real-time polling, which keeps people engaged by participating in the way that suits them best. This ensures the active participation of those present, exchanging knowledge and experience, and the generation of new ideas and solutions.
  • Opportunities for innovation. Hybrid events use new technologies, encouraging experimentation and improving existing communication methods. The ability to innovate when hosting a hybrid event will allow you to create new and unique experiences for your audience that will help you gain a competitive advantage and set you apart from other companies.
  • Adaptation to changing circumstances. In unpredictable circumstances, hybrid events will allow you to remain flexible and prepared for unforeseen circumstances that often arise when hosting international events. Therefore, weather conditions, logistics problems, or other challenges will not stand in your way because you can switch between real and virtual spaces, ensuring stability.

hybrid meeting meaning

What Are the Benefits of Hybrid Events?

Having an important role for businesses in their event strategies, hybrid events have certain benefits:

  • Expanded reach. Multilingual hybrid events allow you to erase geographical boundaries and attract audiences worldwide. This approach increases engagement and creates a positive brand reputation among international audiences.
  • Flexibility. Depending on their schedule or location, hybrid event participants can choose how they want to attend. Flexibility allows us to increase the accessibility of such events so that everyone has the opportunity to join.
  • Economic efficiency. Hybrid events are often cheaper than physical ones. Organizers can save on some costs while maintaining all aspects and features to create positive emotions and impressions.
  • Advanced analytics. Technologies used in hybrid events often provide analytics and statistics. With them, organizers can conduct surveys and collect feedback to evaluate the event’s success and make improvements based on analytics.

Multi-Language Solutions for Hybrid Event Platforms

As mentioned, hybrid events targeting an international audience cannot do without professional interpretation services and multilingual solutions. All this is necessary to ensure a positive experience and easy communication between all event participants.

Multilingual solutions for hybrid events include modern technology to adapt to the linguistic diversity of those quickly and efficiently in attendance. One such solution could be the introduction of automatic translation, thanks to which participants can receive a translation in their language in just a couple of clicks. Unfortunately, such machines are too robotic and do not consider the cultural characteristics of your audience.

Another solution is real-time remote simultaneous interpretation (RSI), which provides instant interpretation in multiple languages by professional interpreters. This approach will allow you to consider the peculiarities of the cultures and languages of your participants, as well as the emotional mood of the speaker. This will avoid misunderstandings due to incorrect translations and contribute to a sense of inclusion and involvement of participants throughout the event.

Are you already in the process of organizing a hybrid event and looking for an interpreter who is familiar with your industry and the culture of your audience? The Connected Care platform is here to help you! Despite all the technical challenges of hosting a hybrid event, these On-Demand Interpreting services will help you quickly find a certified interpreter for your needs. The Connected Care team uses enhanced technological solutions and considers all cultural aspects of your audience to ensure a positive and unforgettable experience.

Conclusion

Hybrid events combine the best features of real and virtual events. By combining personal interactions and technological solutions to improve communication in cyberspace, multilingual hybrid events allow you to unite audiences from different parts of the world and increase engagement. High-quality interpretation services play an important role in accurately conveying information at such events. Translation and interpretation should be done by professionals who understand aspects of your participants’ cultures and your industry to convey the speaker’s message accurately. Considering all these aspects, the level of organizing business events will reach a new level, which will create a good reputation and competitive advantage.

What is Over-The-Phone Interpretation, And How Does it Work?

According to statistics, almost a quarter of the US population speaks a language other than English daily. That way, many businesses get the necessity of working with a client, customer, or a possible partner whose mother tongue is different, which causes certain language issues to appear. This type of complication requires an effective solution that will be easy to provide and meet every party’s requirement for accurate translation.

The greatest answer would be over-the-phone interpretation (OPI), which is considered one of the most common methods of interpreting nowadays. It’s a verbal interpretation, provided with a three-way phone call between two parties and an interpreter as an intermediary. 

It has a pretty simple technique: one speaks into the phone, the interpreter on the other line translates, and the other person hears already transferred to his preferred language speech. It’s a great and cost-effective way of establishing a proper understanding between you and your client, whether standing next to each other or being in different parts of the world.

In this article, we’ll establish the definition of OPI and talk about it with the expert Andrea Renjifo, interpreting account manager at The Language Doctors, who will clear the air about this particular interpreting method.

Andrea Renjifo, interpreting account manager at The Language Doctors

Understanding Phone Interpreter.

A phone interpreter (translator) is a person who provides OPI and acts as an information transporter between two parties. Their work plays a key role in the interpretation services overall. Telephone interpreters allow people with different cultural backgrounds to communicate and work together freely. 

If you want your conversation to be effective for everyone, the assistance of a proper phone interpreter becomes essential. A person translating your discussion should be fluent in the preferred language or industry’s specifics and able to think and interpret quickly, break the cultural barrier, and adapt to your specific requirements. The interpreter’s work is not only about transferring speech from one language to another but also ensuring understanding between people on a much deeper level, using the language as an instrument.

“For the interpreters, it’s easier to work from home. They can give more hours to the platform, and they can be available for a longer time. So basically, that is what entails OPI; you have an interpreter over the phone who can help you with whatever you need,” says Andrea Renjifo, depicting the possibilities open for the interpreter while working this way. This, however, brings a lot of profit for the client too.

Asking for assistance from the phone call translator will ensure the correctness of the interpretation itself and create comfortable conditions for you and your customer to work in.

What Are the Downsides Phone Interpreter?

Even though OPI is one of the most popular ways of remote interpretation, just like everything else, it has its cons. 

First, a telephone interpreter uses consecutive interpretation to translate the speech. This means that the interpreter interprets the words only after the speaker says them, which results in a more time-consuming conversation. On the other hand, consecutive interpreting allows the translator to be much more accurate with the finished interpretation.

Another complication may appear with the technical aspect of the conversation. Even though a simple phone call is a pretty undemanding way of providing remote interpretation, some connection problems or other errors could become a real issue. It also includes the call quality, which background noises or interferences might ruin.

Moreover, OPI fits a standard two-sided conversation more. If it involves the necessity of working with not one but a couple of interpreters for each language pair, the call may become messier. 

What Are the Advantages of Phone Interpreters?

However, despite all the flaws that have been mentioned above, OPI has a huge number of advantages that define it among other interpreting methods. Here’s what Andrea says about the main OPI benefits: 

“Over-the-phone interpretation offers you not only easy access to it because it’s very, very accessible. You can access it through the web or your phone and download an app on our Connected Care platform by TLD. So that’s an easy way to access it. It’s also cost-effective, so it’s a permanent charge. You can upgrade per hour. There’s no minimums for it either, so that is better for the customer.”

If we put it into order, there’s a list of the OPI’s positive traits:

  • Availability. Thanks to its technique, over-the-phone interpretation allows you to contact the interpreter and arrange a call within seconds from any part of the world in any conditions.
  • Cost-effectiveness. Among all other interpretation services, OPI doesn’t require much and, as a result, is a much cheaper solution while still staying just as functional.
  • Accuracy. Even though it is based on a more time-consuming consecutive interpretation, it raises the translation’s correctness since the telephone interpreter has more time to think about the speech.
  • Simplicity. The technological aspect of OPI is clear and easy to understand, using only your mobile device for communication. There’s no need for a professional computer, specified platforms, or even an internet connection, which simplifies the whole process.
  • Confidentiality. Using a simple phone call as the main communication method helps you secure your data and ensures that the information won’t slip beyond conversation.

All of this makes the assistance of phone interpreters a great solution for any language issue. Where can you find a proper linguist who will ensure the understanding of the conversation and ease the tension? Language service provider (LSI) is the answer to it. 

The Language Doctors is a highly trusted language provider that offers over-the-phone interpretation and dozens of other services, assisting people worldwide with their issues. It is the greatest option for establishing proper communication during multilingual interactions, which values accuracy and perfection. 

What Can an Over-The-Phone Interpreter Do for You?

Despite OPI’s specifics, many people worldwide are choosing this method of interpretation due to its effectiveness. Let’s look at how a phone interpreter can help enhance the productivity of your multilingual conversation and leave both parties pleased.

One of the main things telephone interpreters provide is a translation of your speech into a language that other people understand. It requires basic language knowledge, awareness of the particular industry’s traits, and an understanding of the subject. The professional phone interpreter is also supposed to take care of the cultural aspect and specifics, delivering the clearest version of the speech to you despite all the linguistic and cultural differences. 

The human factor constantly influences our communications of any type and plays a key role in business-type conversations. With the problem of the language barrier, which causes many inconveniences and uncomfortable conditions to appear, it may be hard for the parties to agree on the subject or reach the set goals. Thankfully, a telephone interpreter is meant to build a comfortable atmosphere for everyone, practicing active listening and encouraging participation in the conversation.

This way, you will get a plain linguistic translation and a conversion of the speech to your understanding specifically, which doesn’t have a lack of human intelligence.

phone interpreter services

How Do You Use a Phone Interpreter?

After all that, the question arises: How do you use over-the-phone interpretation correctly? How do you arrange this kind of language support for your conversation? Here are some tips on how OPI works and how to make your dialogue succeed.

  1. Find language service providers that are offering OPI as one of the services. Check the price, the quality of the interpretation, and, most importantly, if they suggest on-demand services to arrange things immediately.
  2. Contact the interpreter and brief them about the subject of your conversation and what is expected from this person. Many language providers offer interpretation services, available 24/7, allowing you to reach a phone interpreter instantly.
  3. Check the connection and prepare for the call, both with your talk’s technical and informative aspects. Ensure that your phone device works just the right way and that there are no distracting background noises.
  4. When the call starts, it usually goes with the typical consecutive interpretation scheme: you share the information on the phone, the telephone interpreter then translates it to the preferred language, and the other person listens to what the interpreter says. And then vice-versa. The method is based on active listening and pauses so everyone can understand the information. And this is what makes OPI so effective.
  5. Watch how you talk; your pace shouldn’t be too quick or slow but just enough for everyone to understand. Keep the formal language, but don’t make the text sound too difficult. These small features determine how the talk will go, depending on how the phone interpreter will understand and translate your words. 

Suppose you are still unsure how to enable over-the-phone interpretation for your conversation. In that case, the recent Connected Care subscription pack from The Language Doctors is a worthy option. It allows you to arrange OPI immediately by clicking the “On-demand Interpreting” button on the website. Then, you get to choose one of the three following packages, which gives you immediate access to one-call interpreting for over 90+ languages, contacting the interpreter 24/7 from the web or mobile app, with the best availability. It was created to meet the client’s needs by providing automatic service, saving time. Try it today! 

When is Phone Translating Preferred?

As was mentioned before, over-the-phone translation has a lot of perks, making it one of the most favored methods of interpretation. It is suitable for most of the cases in any industry due to its availability and clearness of use.

  • One of the situations where OPI becomes necessary is in long-distance dealing. Instead of wasting so many resources on traveling from one country to another, it is better to use a simple phone call to contact your client and the telephone interpreter, saving everyone the trouble.
  • Over-the-phone interpretation is great since you don’t need to use any complicated digital platforms or additional technical devices. Moreover, there’s no need for an internet connection when OPI is provided. This makes it fit for conditions lacking connection or sudden failure.
  • People use OPI regularly in emergency situations, where tons of things are at stake. In such dangerous and extreme conditions, there’s no time to arrange a full meeting with an interpreter, and phone translating is handy. It is widely used by hospitals, police departments, and other institutions to save people constantly.
  • Customer service is another case in which OPI is preferred. When working with a customer, the communication should be swift and simple, and that’s exactly what over-the-phone interpretation is ready to provide.

What Determines Interpretation Rates?

The interpretation rate is a fixed price for the interpreting services. Numerous factors determine it and set the standard of interpreting on the market. All those aspects influence the phone interpreter’s work and, in return, the price that comes with it.

“What determines our rates is just the language categories (each depending on the language’s difficulty and prevalence) that we have in our services. You don’t have to pay any set of fees. You just pay for the minutes that you use, and the rate that we’re going to charge depends on the language category where the language you need to work with is in,” – mentions Andrea Renjifo about how The Language Doctors determine interpretation rates, based on the language and its difficulty. Despite this, some more factors influence the general price of a service:

  • Time. There’s a huge difference between a 20-minute dialogue and a full one-hour meeting, so the telephone interpreter needs to be paid more for the hours this person works.
  • Language. Some languages may be more complicated than others, and it’s common knowledge. They may contain specific jargon or other traits the translator needs to handle during the session.
  • Industry specifics. The same rule applies to particular language cases connected with an industry. A phone interpreter specializing in travel and another specializing in medicine will cost differently due to these specifics.
  • Type of interpretation. Every kind of translation service, whether OPI or video remote interpretation, requires its own preparations and operational costs from the company, usually covered with a different sum.
  • Knowledge & Education of the interpreter. It’s no secret that people often choose the most influential and experienced option regarding the interpreter or LSI. The more valuable the service is – the more it will cost.
  • Quality. The excellence of the finished product is the most obvious thing that influences the resulting price of this particular service. It contains all the aspects mentioned before, like the phone interpreter’s knowledge and experience, operational cost, and the general time of the session.

Conclusion

In summary, over-the-phone interpretation has advantages, disadvantages, and other specifics that distinguish it from other interpretation methods. It offers a great solution for any language issue, offering the necessary support. OPI is widely known for being cost-effective and time-saving while maintaining top-class accuracy.

If you seek a language provider who can solve your problem, The Language Doctors – the trusted provider of interpreting services in more than 200 languages – is a great option. With the amount of linguist services, possible language pairs, and professional translators it provides, you can easily find an answer to your situation specifically and make a complicated multilingual issue much simpler and more comfortable to deal with.

“Well, at The Language Doctors, we take the time to train our interpreters. We take the time to teach them protocol and teach them not only how to manage a call well but also how to be customer service-oriented for the clients. We try to be very responsive, very, very fast for our clients, and any kind of troubleshooting that may happen on their end, on the interpreters end, we try to resolve that as fast as we can.” – comments Andrea Renjifo.