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Interpreters for Mergers and Due Diligence

In a cross-border acquisition the buyer learns most of what it knows about the target from people speaking another language: the founder, the finance team, the plant manager. Here is who should arrange the interpreter, where in a deal one is needed, what goes wrong with financial and legal vocabulary, and what it costs.

Who arranges the interpreter in a deal

The buyer does, usually through its deal team or its counsel; there is no rule that makes the target or anyone else supply one. The target will often offer its own bilingual CFO, general counsel or investor-relations manager to carry the meetings, and for a friendly first introduction that can be fine. For diligence it is not: that person is part of the selling side, has a view on every answer, and decides — without anyone noticing — how much of a hesitation, a qualification or an aside between two managers reaches the buyer. An interpreter who answers to the buyer renders all of it.

Two rules that do apply are about written translation, not interpreting. Documents in a foreign language that have to be submitted with a Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification, or in response to a second request, must come with verbatim English translations that are accurate and complete (16 CFR 803.8). SEC electronic filings must be in English, and a foreign-language document that a filing requires is replaced by a fair and accurate English translation (17 CFR 232.306). Those are document jobs for due diligence document translation, quoted separately; the interpreter covers what is said in the rooms.

Where in a deal an interpreter is needed

• Management presentations. Several hours of the target's executives walking through the business, the numbers and the plan, often with the buyer's whole team and advisers on the call. When most of the audience needs English, simultaneous interpreting on a Zoom or Teams interpretation channel keeps the session at its natural length; consecutive doubles it.
• Diligence Q&A sessions and expert calls. Accounting, tax, legal, IT and commercial workstreams each have their own calls with the target's specialists. These are consecutive, question by question, and the precision of each answer matters more than the pace.
• Site visits. A walk through the plant, the warehouse or the lab with the operations manager. The interpreter stays beside the buyer's lead and whispers or works in short consecutive bursts; questions about capacity, maintenance, permits and safety records come up on the floor, not on the agenda.
• Key-employee and management interviews. Retention conversations and assessments of the people the buyer intends to keep. These are sensitive, often one to one, and better with an interpreter who is not on either company's payroll.
• Negotiation of the purchase agreement. Price adjustments, warranties, indemnities and earn-outs argued across the table — see business meetings and negotiations for running that part.
• After closing. Integration workshops and the announcement to the target's employees, where the new owner speaks to a workforce in its own language for the first time.

Where diligence goes wrong in another language

The risk is not the everyday vocabulary but the terms that look the same and are not. Accounting words such as "provision", "reserve", "contingency" and "statutory accounts" carry different meanings depending on whether the target reports under local rules, IFRS or US GAAP, and a manager who says "the provision covers it" may mean something narrower than the buyer hears. Corporate forms — a GmbH, an S.A. de C.V., a sociedad limitada — do not map onto US entities. Labor terms matter in every deal and differ widely: mandatory severance regimes, thirteenth-month pay, works councils, union agreements, informal contractors. Tax concepts, permits and licenses are similar. Brief the interpreter to keep the local term, say it, and render its meaning, rather than substituting the nearest English word.

The second risk is selective rendering on the other side. When the target's managers confer with each other in their own language before answering, that exchange is part of the answer. An interpreter working for the buyer renders it or tells the buyer's lead that it happened; a seller-side bilingual does not. Agree with your interpreter in advance how to flag side conversations, answers that did not address the question, and words the speaker chose to hedge with.

Confidentiality and how to brief

An interpreter in a deal hears material that is not public: the price, the target's numbers, sometimes the fact that a sale is happening at all. Use the deal's code names in the request and the scheduling invitations. Share only what the interpreter needs for the sessions they will work — the agenda, the attendee list with names and roles, the management presentation deck, the diligence question lists for their calls, and a glossary from the deal team or counsel — rather than data-room access. If your firm requires interpreters to sign a confidentiality agreement or be engaged through counsel, say so when you request; we confirm whether that can be arranged before you book.

Booking a diligence process

Calls are virtual at $80 per interpreter per hour with a one-hour minimum, billed from the scheduled start: ten one-hour expert calls across two weeks are $800; booked as back-to-back blocks on the same days, the hours are the same and the scheduling is easier. A three-hour management presentation interpreted simultaneously on a platform channel, with two interpreters taking turns, is 2 × 3 × $80 = $480. A two-day site visit in person, 9 to 5 each day, with two interpreters in relay, is 2 × 8 × $110 × 2 = $3,520, plus travel at $0.70 per mile from each interpreter's location, confirmed before you book.

Tell us the languages on both sides, the time zones, which sessions are presentations and which are question-and-answer, and roughly how many sessions you expect over the process; diligence schedules move, and we confirm each date as it firms up. Financial statements, contracts and corporate records that the deal team needs to read in English are financial statement translation and due diligence document translation, priced per page.

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.

Sources

What this page says about the rules was checked against these official sources on October 28, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.

• 16 CFR 803.8 — Hart-Scott-Rodino premerger notification rules: foreign language documents (eCFR)
• 17 CFR 232.306 — SEC Regulation S-T: foreign language documents and symbols (eCFR)

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