Home / Interpreters / Conferences, trainings and events
Interpreters for Conferences, Trainings and Events
A conference, a company town hall or a multi-day training puts one speaker in front of many listeners for hours. Here is how to choose between simultaneous and consecutive, how many interpreters a day takes, what the venue has to provide, and what it costs.
Simultaneous needs equipment
Booths or a platform channel, consoles and listener headsets — supplied by the venue or its AV company.
Two per language for a full day
Long sessions may need two interpreters taking turns, priced per interpreter per hour.
$1,760 a language-day
Two interpreters in person for eight hours at $110 an hour, plus travel.
Who arranges the interpreter and the equipment
The organizer does: the company holding the town hall, the association running the conference, the training provider or its client. Listeners should not be expected to bring their own. What the organizer has to arrange is two separate things — the interpreters, and, if the interpreting is simultaneous in a room, the equipment that carries their voice to the audience.
Equipment is not among eVerbary's published services. We provide interpreters. Booths, interpreter consoles, receivers and headsets come from the venue or an audio-visual company, and the venue's AV team is usually the one to ask first. Tell us what the venue has or what your AV company proposes when you request, and we will confirm what is possible with it before you book.
Simultaneous or consecutive
The European Commission's interpreting service defines the modes simply: consecutive interpreting comes after the speaker has finished, usually from notes; simultaneous happens while the person is speaking, with booths, earphones and a microphone; whispered interpreting is simultaneous, delivered directly into a listener's ear from beside them.
In practice: a keynote, a panel or a town hall for a mixed audience is simultaneous, because consecutive would double the running time and lose the room. A small training where everyone shares one language other than the trainer's can work consecutively, and the trainer plans for half the content per hour. One or two attendees in an English session can be served by whispered interpreting with no equipment at all, provided they sit together and the room is not loud. For a virtual event, platforms that offer a separate interpretation channel let listeners choose the language; the host has to set it up and assign the interpreter before the session, and it should be tested with the interpreter beforehand.
Teams, turns and relay
Simultaneous interpreting is tiring work, and quality drops before the day is out. Long or full-day sessions may need two interpreters per language who take turns, and they are priced per interpreter per hour. Each language the audience needs is its own team: a conference interpreted into Spanish and Korean needs a Spanish team and a Korean team.
"Relay" also has a second meaning worth knowing. The Commission uses it for indirect interpreting: interpreters work from a language outside their own pair through a bridging language. If a panelist speaks Portuguese and the audience needs Korean, the Korean interpreter may work from the English rendering of the Portuguese rather than from the Portuguese itself. It works, but every error in the first rendering is carried into the second, so tell us every language that will be spoken from the stage, not only the ones the audience needs.
What the venue has to provide for simultaneous interpreting
- A place for the interpreters to work: a soundproofed booth, permanent or mobile. The Commission lists ISO 17651 parts 1 and 2 as the standards for permanent and mobile booths, and ISO 20109 for the equipment itself.
- A clean audio feed from every microphone in the room into the booth, including audience microphones for questions — a question asked without a microphone cannot be interpreted.
- A console and microphone for each interpreter, and an outgoing channel for each language.
- Receivers and headsets for every listener who needs them, with someone handing them out and collecting them.
- A sightline from the booth to the speakers and the screens, or a video feed of both.
- A technician present for the whole session. When the sound fails, the interpreting fails with it.
What to send the interpreters, and when
Slides, speeches, the agenda, speaker names and titles, product names and acronyms, and any video that will be played with sound — a week ahead if they exist, the day before if that is all you have. Speakers who read a written text at speed are the hardest to interpret; if a speech is scripted, the interpreters need the script, and the speaker should be asked to slow down. For trainings, the course materials and any test or quiz that will be read aloud.
What it costs
A one-hour virtual town hall with one interpreter is $80. In person, a full conference day from 9 to 5 with simultaneous interpreting into one language is two interpreters × eight hours × $110 = $1,760, plus travel at $0.70 per mile from each interpreter's location, confirmed before you book. Two audience languages double that: $3,520 plus travel. A three-hour consecutive training in one language with one interpreter is $330. Equipment, if needed, is quoted by the venue or the AV company, not by us. Handouts and slides that should go out in writing in other languages are a separate translation service.
By video, by phone or in person
Virtual interpreting runs on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, or over the telephone. It is quicker to arrange, costs less and carries no travel charge, and it suits appointments, calls and most meetings.
In person is what venues with their own rules tend to expect, and the right choice when documents are being signed or several people are speaking at once. Tell us the platform, or the city and the venue, when you send the request.
Languages
The standard-availability languages are: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Polish, Italian, German, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Serbian, Bosnian, Somali and Nepali. Every other language we offer carries the 25–30% limited-availability rate. If a language is not on that list it is not because we cannot do it — it is because the pool of qualified interpreters in the United States is small enough that we will not promise a date without checking.
Each language has its own page on what to watch for — dialects, names, dates, who the speakers usually are: see interpreters by language.
What it costs
Rates are per interpreter, per hour, and billed from the scheduled start time rather than from when everyone actually arrives.
- Virtual — $80 per hour, one-hour minimum. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or telephone.
- In person — $110 per hour, two-hour minimum.
- Limited-availability languages — add 25–30%. Which languages those are is listed below rather than left vague.
- Travel for in-person work — $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location.
How the travel charge works out
Travel is charged at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, which means you can work it out rather than wait for a quote: a 20-mile round trip is $14, a 60-mile round trip is $42, a 150-mile round trip is $105. There is no separate call-out fee on top.
We will not pretend to know in advance where the interpreter will be coming from — that depends on the language, the date and the venue. What we do is confirm the interpreter and the exact travel figure before you book, so it is never a surprise on the invoice. Virtual assignments carry no travel charge at all, which is one reason most of what we do is virtual.
How booking an interpreter works
- You send the request with the form below: the language, the setting, the format, the date and how long it should last.
- We confirm before you commit: the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one. We reply the same business day, and no payment is taken at this stage.
- You confirm, and the interpreter is booked for your date.
What to have ready
The more of this comes in the first message, the fewer exchanges before you have a price:
- The language, the date, the start time and how long it should run.
- Virtual or in person: the platform, or the city and the venue.
- The setting and the subject matter.
- How many people need interpreting for.
- Any credential the venue requires of the interpreter.
Request an interpreter
Tell us the date, the language and the setting and we will come back with the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one — before you commit to anything.
Thank you — we have your request
We will reply the same business day with the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one, before you commit to anything.
Sources
What this page says about the rules was checked against these official sources on October 21, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Interpretation — Conference interpreting: types and terminology
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Interpretation — Standards for interpreting facilities (ISO standards for booths and equipment)
Frequently asked questions
Do you provide interpreting booths and headsets?
No. Equipment is not among our published services; it comes from the venue or an audio-visual company. Tell us what the venue has when you request and we will confirm what is possible with it before you book.
Should our conference use simultaneous or consecutive interpreting?
Simultaneous for keynotes, panels and large mixed audiences; consecutive for small sessions where doubling the time is acceptable. The European Commission's interpreting service explains the difference: consecutive follows the speaker, simultaneous runs alongside with booths and earphones.
How many interpreters do we need for a full-day event?
A full day may need two per audience language, taking turns; we confirm the number with the price before you book. Each additional language is another team.
Can the interpreters work remotely into a live, in-person event?
Yes, by video, provided the venue can send the room audio to the interpreters and bring their voice back to the listeners. That is an AV question to settle with the venue before the event, and worth testing the day before.
What is relay interpreting?
Interpreting through a bridging language: for example, Portuguese into English, and the Korean interpreter working from the English. The European Commission calls it indirect interpreting.
Is the price per person or per interpreter?
Per interpreter, per hour, billed from the scheduled start time. One interpreter covers a meeting; a full-day hearing may need two working in relay.
How is travel charged?
$0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location — a 20-mile round trip is $14. We confirm the exact figure before you book, and virtual assignments carry none.
Need an interpreter?
Tell us the date, the language and the setting and we will confirm the interpreter and the exact price.