Multilingual meetings and events are on the upswing, but the use of translation to bridge the language gap remains low.
That’s according to the 2022 State of Multuligual Collaboration, a study by Dimensional Research, in partnership with Wordly, published recently.
The findings find that although inclusivity is important to corporate meeting and event planners, only 40 per cent are apathetic to audience needs. Planners believe attendees will understand the language “well enough” or just not attend.
In addition, 77 per cent of respondents observed an uptick in multilingual attendees in the last year, with 58 per cent reporting that more than a quarter of their audience speaks a different language than the presenter.
However, despite the number of multilingual events, only 33 per cent of planners regularly offer interpretation services at their meetings and events.
In addition, the study found that while human translations services are still popular, respondents noted there is a growing demand for technology-powered solutions. Respondents indicated that they want solutions that are easy for attendees to use, support all languages spoken, and enable attendees to listen to audio or read captions.
“As multilingual meetings and conferences continue to grow at a rapid rate, organizers need to invest in interpretation solutions to drive multilingual collaboration,” said Lakshman Rathnam, Founder and CEO of Wordly. “These findings confirm that when interpretation is not offered, engagement, inclusion, and productivity suffer. Legacy human interpreters are not a preferred solution for most organizations due to cost and logistical complexity. Wordly helps drive multilingual collaboration with our AI-powered interpretation solution, making it possible for any organization to be more inclusive with their employees, members, and citizens.”
To download the complete findings, please visit Wordly Research Report.
Leave a Reply