For decades, a multilingual conference meant the same shopping list: soundproof booths at the back of the hall, a team of professional interpreters, and a bin of receiver headsets to hand out and collect. It worked, but it was expensive, heavy to transport, and impossible to scale up at short notice. There is now a lighter way.
The problem with the traditional setup
Booth interpretation is superb — and costly. You pay for the booths, the receivers, the technicians, and interpreters for every language, usually in pairs. Add a language a week before the event and the budget jumps. Run a smaller session and the whole rig still has to be built. For many organisers, the cost simply rules out languages they would love to offer.
The browser-based alternative
Instead of receivers, attendees use their own phones. Instead of booths, the speaker's microphone feeds a system that transcribes and translates in real time, sending subtitles — and optional spoken audio — to each attendee in the language they choose. Setup takes minutes from a laptop, and adding a language is a setting, not a logistics project.
What you gain
- Every session covered. Small breakout rooms get the same translation as the main stage, because there is no rig to move.
- Languages on demand. Offer twenty and only pay for the ones people actually listen to.
- A searchable record. The transcript can be saved in every language, so talks live on after the event and can be found on the web.
When booths still make sense
To be fair: for high-stakes diplomatic or legal settings where a certified human interpreter is required, booths remain the standard. But for the vast majority of conferences, workshops, and gatherings, browser-based translation delivers the reach at a fraction of the cost and effort.
Try it at your next service
InMyTongue streams live subtitles and spoken translation to every attendee's phone — in the language they choose — straight from a browser, with nothing to install. New accounts start with free credit, and no card is needed to try it. See how it works.