Virtual and hybrid meetings present a huge benefit when it comes to reaching a wider audience, but streaming an event around the world comes with its own challenges — one of the biggest being language barriers.
Although virtual events are inherently more accessible than their in-person counterparts in many ways, there are still accessibility considerations to take into account, particularly when it comes to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, or people whose native language it not English (these considerations are important for in-person events as well).
Many event tech providers have accounted for this and offer certain accessibility features, ranging from AI-generated captions to audio translations to live human interpreters. The benefit of reaching more people can easily be wasted if those people aren’t able to glean value from the event — a lack of multilingual features can lead to decreased engagement and productivity from attendees.
AI-powered interpretation services provider Wordly recently commissioned a global study, conducted by Dimensional Research in April, to look into the current challenges that event organizers of multilingual meetings are facing as well as future trends. Wordly has released the findings in its 2022 State of Multilingual Collaboration report, which is based on the survey responses of a little over 200 meeting and event managers in the US and the UK.
The research confirms that an increasing number of meetings and events are reaching more global audiences: 77 percent of corporate meeting and event planners indicated that they have experienced an increase in multilingual attendees over the past year, and 72 percent of them expect the number to continue to grow next year.
However, even with these increases, 42 percent of planners still report that they have limited or no experience using interpretation and translation at their events, and only 33 percent report that they regularly offer interpretation.
What accounts for that gap? According to the study, the top barriers to offering these types of features include translator scheduling complexity, equipment complexity, and having too many languages to support. Notably, 40 percent of respondents indicated that they don’t include these features because they believe that non-English speakers will find a way to adapt or elect not to attend, which is not an inclusive mindset and can lead to entire audience segments being neglected.
The report suggests that the use of interpretation is still highest at in-person events (79 percent) versus virtual events (61 percent), but this could also be due to the fact that the respondents may have more experience working on in-person events than virtual events in general, as opposed to specifically choosing to implement this offering more at in-person events.
Overall, event managers understand the benefits of adding translation and interpretation features, both for their businesses and for the attendees, even if some are still reluctant to do so. Respondents indicated that their top desired features in a technology solution are attendee ease of use, the ability to support all attendee languages, and having both audio and caption output. While AI-generated captions/translations are often less accurate than humans, they are most cost-effective and can be a good option for events that otherwise wouldn’t offer anything.