You're hosting a business meeting, town hall, or webinar on Zoom, but not everyone joining speaks the same language. Know the feeling? That's where live translation solutions like remote simultaneous interpretation, captions, subtitles and AI speech to speech translation can make the impossible possible.
Zoom offers some built-in language capability but, as many have found out, not the serious capability needed for serious events. Interprefy offers the same high-function multi-lingual support for Zoom as it does for other meeting and conferencing platforms.
Language interpretation, Zoom integration, and managed interpretation services ensure a seamless experience for all parties, to even the most complex set-ups, like for example The White House Summit on Climate Change.
But before we jump ahead of ourselves, let's look at the Zoom translation options available today.
Hosts of multilingual Zoom meetings and webinars have essentially three types of translation technology available to them:
Zoom's interpretation feature allows you to connect interpreters to your meetings. Meeting hosts have to activate the interpretation feature when scheduling the meeting and select the audio language channels they want to make available during the meeting.
Once scheduled, meeting hosts will need to find the right interpreters and invite them to the meeting in their designated roles.
At the time of writing this article, Zoom allows for the setting up of a default list of 9 languages, as well as setting up to 25 additional custom languages. Interpreters will be provided with an interpreter meeting link to join the session.
In order to use the language interpretation feature in Zoom, you will require a Zoom Pro plan or higher. You can activate the language interpretation feature in your Zoom account. You will have to log in to the Zoom web portal, and go to 'advanced settings'. After that, it's quite straightforward:
Once the interpretation in your required languages is set up, you will see an audio channel for each language in your Zoom meeting. Your meeting participants can find the language channels in the bottom navigation bar and simply select their preferred audio language.
While Zoom's built-in interpretation feature is a popular choice for small, simple meetings, it comes with a few challenges for both the interpreter and the meeting organiser.
Initially, Zoom wasn't built for interpretation and lacks the specialized tools that professional interpreters require.
As with any resource, the difference a sub-optimal working environment makes is that the specialist, professional interpreters, who represent a significant cost, will not deliver as good a service as they should. A lot of the missing features relate to interpreters working together:
The success of multilingual Zoom meetings, and bigger events boils down to three factors: Having the right interpreters available; using reliable and specialized tech; and having the right interpretation partner who can assist with setting up your interpretation, onboard the interpreters, and deliver both general and language-specific technical support throughout the meeting.
A professional end-to-end remote interpretation provider like Interprefy can help by setting you up for success and making your Zoom event a seamless and rewarding experience for all involved.
Interprefy can:
With Interprefy for Zoom, both meeting participants and interpreters can enjoy a range of benefits, and focus solely on the content of their Zoom meeting or webinar, while Interprefy manages the rest.
The Interprefy real-time interpretation solution can be integrated with Zoom to stream the video and audio from the Zoom meeting to our interpreter soft console and feed the interpreters' translated rendition of the speech back into Zoom into the respective interpretation audio channels.
Watch how Interprefy language interpretation for Zoom works:
Working with Interprefy, you can tap into a global pool of interpreting talent. Interprefy partners with leading Language Service Providers across the globe to source, train and onboard thousands of vetted pro-interpreters. That means you can find the best fit interpreters for even the rarest language combinations and with the expertise in your subject area.
For Zoom meetings without language interpretation, meeting organisers can choose to activate closed captioning in multiple languages, providing participants with live transcription of what's being said. Captions can be a game changer, providing a range of benefits, from better accessibility, to better knowledge retention.
Zoom meeting hosts can enable automatic live transcription / captioning for a meeting, or assign participants to manually type captions (CART). If a participant joins the meeting and closed captioning is available for that meeting, the captions can be viewed on the display.
Yes, In October 2021 Zoom made automated captions, also known as live transcription, a feature available to all Zoom accounts.
Zoom meeting hosts have two captioning options available:
If you are required to use speech-to-text support for any compliance or accessibility needs in your meetings and webinars, Zoom themselves recommend using an external third-party service able to guarantee specific accuracy.
In October 2021, Zoom has made automated captions available to all users, even on free plans. The feature was designed to help increase accessibility for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, providing a live transcription of what's being said.
You can activate captioning for Zoom in the Zoom web portal:
When activated by the meeting host, participants can click on Show Captions (CC).
Automated captions will begin generating and appearing in the meeting window.
Zoom can automatically generate live captions for speech in the following languages: French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese (Simplified)(Beta), Russian, Japanese (Beta), Korean (Beta), Dutch, and Ukrainian.
A recent study reports 90-95% captions accuracy. The problem with captions accuracy measurement however is that it often does not take into consideration the seriousness of mistakes. Zoom does not offer a dictionary tool, or any preparation capability to pre-populate the system with names, acronyms, or context-specific terms that you need to be sure will be accurately transcribed.
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Yes, Zoom-translated captions allow users to have the speech automatically real-time translated and access captions in another language. For example, if a meeting participant is speaking in English, other participants can view Italian, German, or Japanese captions.
Which caption languages are available during a meeting or webinar are determined by the host in the web settings before the live session, but participants can enable captions and switch languages themselves.
Currently, Zoom supports automatic translation of captions from English into these 12 languages: Chinese Mandarin – Simplified (beta), Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese (beta), Korean (beta), Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
While only translation from English into these languages is currently available, Zoom has announced it will introduce more language pairs over time.
While a great first step in helping Zoom meeting organisers overcome accessibility and language barriers, Zoom's automatic captioning comes with a few limitations:
With Interprefy’s expanded captioning language support including dictionaries that extend into 40+ languages. Using Interprefy, Zoom sessions can now be streamed with real-time captions in additional languages, as well as translations to multiple languages.
Using Interprefy-powered captions and subtitles next time you host a Zoom event could mean the difference between merely having an audience and having a highly engaged audience.
If you're looking to bridge the language gap in your Zoom meetings or webinars, Interprefy can provide you with both leading-edge technology and hands-on support designed specifically for successful multi-lingual meetings. This will empower you to cater to the most complex configurations and also the simplest setups with the most demanding circumstances, like last-minute changes, rare languages and nervous speakers.