Category: Blog

Working with an ASL interpreter helps ensure effective Deaf and hard-of-hearing communication in meetings, events, and everyday conversations. When everyone understands a few basic best practices, conversations become smoother, more natural, and more respectful for all involved.

This guide covers essential ASL interpreter etiquette and explains how to choose the right interpreting option — whether on-demand Video Remote Interpreting (VRI), scheduled VRI, or on-site interpreting.

ASL interpreter etiquette checklist (quick reference)

• Speak directly to the Deaf or hard-of-hearing person, not the interpreter
• Take turns and avoid speaking over others
• Pause to allow the interpreter to finish signing before responses
• Turn on your camera and ensure faces are visible
• Identify yourself when speaking in group settings
• Remember: interpreters must interpret everything, including side conversations

Choosing the right interpreting option

Different conversations call for different interpreting solutions. Choosing the right option helps balance accessibility, availability, and experience quality.

• On-demand ASL interpreting: Designed for short, spontaneous conversations that require immediate access, such as last-minute check-ins or unplanned interactions.
• Scheduled Video Remote Interpreting (VRI): Best for in-person, virtual, or hybrid meetings of any length where participants remain mostly stationary and have access to reliable internet, a camera, and a microphone. Scheduled VRI offers broader availability and preparation flexibility.
• On-site ASL interpreting: Ideal for in-person meetings or events lasting several hours or multiple days — especially when participants are moving around, the setting is outdoors, or internet access is unreliable. On-site interpreting can be particularly effective for high-stakes or relationship-driven conversations.

Before the conversation: how to prepare to work with an ASL interpreter

Preparation plays a key role in a successful interpreted conversation.

• Request interpreting services in advance: Whenever possible, schedule interpreting ahead of time — especially for longer or more complex meetings.
• Ask about interpreter preferences: If appropriate, ask Deaf participants whether they have preferences related to communication style or familiarity with certain terminology.
• Share context with the interpreter: Provide agendas, participant names, specialized terms, and relevant background information so interpreters can prepare.
• Test your technology: Confirm that your internet connection, camera, and microphone are working properly if using VRI. Ensure Deaf participants can clearly see the screen and interpreter, and hearing participants are close to the microphone or using a headset or Bluetooth device.

Preparation may differ depending on whether you are using scheduled interpreting or on-demand services.

ASL interpreter etiquette during the conversation

Following basic ASL interpreting etiquette helps conversations flow naturally.

• Speak directly to the Deaf or hard-of-hearing person
• Maintain eye contact with the person, not the interpreter
• Take turns and avoid overlapping speech
• Pause to allow the interpreter to finish signing before responses
• Identify yourself when speaking in group settings
• Use clear facial expressions and body language

If referencing slides, handouts, or visuals, pause so everyone — including the interpreter — can review them.

ASL interpreting etiquette for virtual and hybrid meetings

Virtual and hybrid environments introduce additional considerations.

• Keep cameras on so facial expressions are visible
• Pin or spotlight the interpreter’s video or allow pinning in the meeting settings
• Avoid repeatedly turning cameras on and off, which can cause video windows to shift
• Use the hand-raise feature to manage turn-taking
• If sharing your screen, confirm the interpreter can still see Deaf participants before continuing

Final thought

ASL interpreters are there to support communication — not to lead it. By following these etiquette best practices and selecting the right interpreting solution for each situation, you help create conversations where Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants can engage fully, confidently, and comfortably.

Frequently asked questions about ASL interpreter etiquette

• What is the proper etiquette when working with an ASL interpreter
  Speak directly to the Deaf or hard-of-hearing person, take turns, avoid side conversations, and allow time for interpretation. Interpreters facilitate communication but do not participate in the conversation.
• Should I talk to the interpreter or the Deaf person?
  Always speak directly to the Deaf or hard-of-hearing person and maintain eye contact with them, not the interpreter.
• How fast should I speak when using an ASL interpreter?
  Speak at a natural pace and pause between thoughts to allow accurate interpretation and responses.
• Do interpreters interpret side conversations?
  Yes. Interpreters are professionally and ethically obligated to interpret everything they hear.
• What should I do differently in virtual meetings with an ASL interpreter?
  Keep your camera on, pin the interpreter’s video, identify yourself when speaking, and pause when sharing visuals.

• When should I use on-demand video remote interpreting (VRI), scheduled VRI, or on-site interpreting?
  On-demand interpreting is best for short, spontaneous conversations. Scheduled VRI works well for most in-person, virtual, or hybrid meetings. On-site interpreting is ideal for long, in-person or high-movement situations.

Business accessibility elements

Ensuring your company provides an inclusive and accessible environment for employees and customers can be a challenge — but well worth it! Communication accessibility can help you reach more potential customers, help to keep you compliant with applicable laws and regulations, and even lead to higher employee and customer satisfaction.

So, where do you start? Before making any big changes or investing in new solutions, it helps to know where you stand right now. These quick tips will help you build a more inclusive, accessible experience for employees and customers.

Workplace communication

• Physical accessibility: Add flashing-light sensors to your smoke detectors, fire alarms, and doorbells. Ensure that important signage includes braille. Be sure that customers and employees can easily find information about what accessibility services your business has available, such as ASL interpreters or screen readers.
  
• Clear communication guidelines: Set easy-to-follow guidelines for how your team communicates. Have speakers introduce themselves so interpreter users can follow along, and use plain language in written messages, particularly when meeting remotely.
• Assistive technologies: Invest in screen readers, speech-to-text software, visual interpreting, and sign language interpreting services to support employees and customers who are blind, low-vision, Deaf, or hard-of-hearing. You can also take advantage of no-cost Video Relay Service (VRS) and call captioning service for employees’ phone calls. Ensure remote meetings, presentations, and events are captioned and translated, and share transcripts afterward to support comprehension and engagement with participants who are neurodiverse, limited English proficient (LEP), Deaf, or hard-of-hearing.
• Training programs: Conduct regular training on accessible content and communication practices. Research¹ from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) indicates that companies with disability-inclusive cultures are more likely to outperform their peers financially.
• Captioning multimedia content: Caption all multimedia content to ensure accessibility for neurodiverse, LEP, Deaf, and hard-of-hearing participants.
• Accessible presentation materials: Share slides and documents before the meeting. Provide them in accessible formats — such as large print, tagged PDFs, or screen-reader–friendly files — so everyone can review and engage at their own pace.
• Physical meeting accessibility: Choose meeting rooms with step-free access, wide pathways, accessible restrooms, and seating options for mobility devices. Confirm the space meets ADA requirements and remove any barriers before the meeting begins.
• Inclusive participation: Make participation easy for everyone: use turn-taking, prompt quieter participants, and allow written or anonymous feedback. Assign an accessibility lead to watch for barriers and support participants during the meeting.

Customer experience

• Website accessibility: Ensure your company website and digital content are accessible to individuals with disabilities by following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
• Proper HTML markup: Use proper HTML markup and provide alternative text for images to enhance accessibility for screen readers and other assistive technologies.
• Accessible digital documents: Design digital documents with accessibility in mind, including proper headings, formatting, and descriptive links.
• Testing for accessibility: Test digital communication platforms for accessibility and usability, ensuring they meet the needs of all users.
• Training on digital accessibility: Provide your employees with training on how to create accessible digital content.
• Physical accessibility: Ensure your business space is equipped with wheelchair ramps, automatic doors, braille signage, and other features that ensure everyone has access.
• Customer service for all: If your organization provides customer service through a call center, consider using tools like call captioning or video relay service (VRS) to enable hard of hearing or Deaf individuals to call in.

Feedback and collaboration

• Open feedback environment: Make it easy for people to speak up about accessibility. Send regular polls, offer anonymous feedback channels, and share updates so everyone sees progress.
• Collaborative problem-solving: Promote collaboration among employees to identify barriers to communication and implement effective solutions.
• Leadership commitment: Lead by example. Prioritize accessibility in all communications and decision-making processes, demonstrating organizational values and fostering a culture of inclusivity.
• Policy integration: Incorporate accessibility considerations into company policies and procedures, ensuring alignment with legal requirements and industry best practices.
• Regular review and update: Regularly review and update accessibility practices to ensure ongoing improvement and compliance with evolving standards and technologies.

Are you ready to start creating a more inclusive and accessible business? Sorenson is committed to providing a suite of solutions to ensure your business is as inclusive and accessible as possible. Speak with our accessibility consultants about how to improve your accessibility strategy.

Schedule a consultation today!

How one church transformed worship accessibility with Sorenson’s Video Remote Interpreting service. 

Client overview

Organization: Elevation Church Ministries
Location: Scottsburg, Indiana
Audience: 500–600 members, both in-person and online
Accessibility focus: American Sign Language (ASL) video remote interpreting (VRI) for Deaf members

The challenge

Elevation Church Ministries exists to share the Word of God with everyone — yet, even in a place built on inclusion, one member’s experience revealed a barrier that couldn’t be ignored.

During a Sunday service, DJ Nocera and the pastoral team at Elevation, noticed a Deaf congregant attending faithfully week after week — participating in worship and even getting baptized, all without being able to understand the sermon.

“Seeing him there, with such faith, but without full understanding — it hit us hard,” DJ recalled. “He was showing up every week, and we realized we weren’t fully reaching him. Plus, when you walk around our church and you can’t understand the language, you don’t feel like you belong.”

Pain points

• Limited access to the message: Deaf members could see and feel the energy of worship but couldn’t fully understand spoken sermons or teachings.
• Interpreter shortage: In rural Indiana, finding qualified in-person ASL interpreters for weekly services was nearly impossible.
• Budget challenges: As a mid-sized church, cost was a major consideration. Elevation needed an affordable, sustainable way to provide interpreting.
• Lack of awareness: Before connecting with the Deaf community, church leaders didn’t realize captions alone weren’t sufficient for full language access.

“We learned that captions aren’t enough for the Deaf community as their primary language is most often ASL — not English,” DJ said.

The solution

To ensure every message was accessible, Elevation Church partnered with Sorenson, using its Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) service to connect Deaf and hearing members in real time.

How It Worked

• Seamless integration: The church’s IT team connected a laptop to an existing TV display, instantly adding a live interpreter feed viewable to the congregation.
• Consistent access: Deaf members could now understand every message, prayer and song — experiencing full participation in worship for the first time.
• Reliable, easy setup: VRI worked flawlessly every week. “Our IT guy has never had a single complaint,” DJ shared.
• Extending inclusivity online: Encouraged by their success in person, Elevation is now working to bring the same inclusivity to their online congregation.

“It brings so much joy to see all members understand the message. We’re also excited to extend the same inclusivity to our online congregation.” 
— DJ, Elevation Church Ministries

The results

• A transformed worship experience: For the first time, Deaf members could access every word of the message — deepening their faith and connection to the church community.
• Growing inclusion and awareness: The area near the interpreter screen soon filled with both Deaf and hearing congregants eager to worship together. Hearing members are also now learning ASL greetings like “good morning” and “God bless you,” to greet Deaf members and build genuine community connection.

“When we added the interpreter, the area around the screen filled up — hearing people wanted to sit there too. Everyone wanted to see and be part of it.” 
— DJ, Elevation Church Ministries 

• Faith in action: “What Jesus represents is leaving the 99 for the 1,” DJ said. “You’re not investing in a piece of technology — you’re investing in a person.”
• Simple and reliable for small team: The Sorenson VRI setup is fast, dependable, and affordable — making it possible for Elevation to offer consistent accessibility without straining resources.
• Expanding the vision: Elevation hopes to eventually add a Deaf-led service and invite more members of the Deaf community to join, ensuring that everyone can worship fully.

"Sorenson makes the spoken Word accessible to Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. As a pastor, if you even suspect you have a Deaf member, you need to understand that the Bible isn’t easily available to them — English is typically not their first language. Sorenson provides a perfect way to share God’s Word with someone who has never been able to access it before." 
— DJ, Elevation Church Ministries

Why choose Sorenson VRI for Ministries

• Accessible for any congregation: Connects Deaf members with interpreters through video — no travel required.
• Simple setup: Works with your existing equipment and Wi-Fi.
• Affordable and scalable: Designed for churches of any size or budget.
• Truly inclusive worship: Bring every member into the message, both in person and online.

Ready to make your services more inclusive?

Learn more about Sorenson VRI

As campuses and schools grow, student success and community involvement both depend on clear, accessible, and inclusive communication. Whether you’re in higher education or K–12, language barriers and accessibility gaps can impact learning, family involvement, and regulatory compliance.

Use this checklist to assess your current strategies and plan for a more inclusive semester. 

1. Language representation

• Which languages are spoken by students, families, faculty, and staff? Use enrollment and HR data or surveys to identify all relevant languages. 
• For which departments, classrooms, or programs will multilingual communication be most critical?

2. Communication challenges

• Are there known gaps due to language differences? 
• Have any classes, teams, or events been affected by communication challenges? 
• Have you received feedback or concerns tied to language access or clarity?

3. Current language support

• What tools or services are in place (interpreters, translated materials, real-time captioning, AI tools, etc.)? 
• Do these meet your needs for accuracy, timeliness, and scale? 
• What are the weaknesses of your current solutions — cost, staffing, or inconsistency?

4. Accessibility

• Do you offer formats like captioning or sign language interpretation? 
• Have you conducted an accessibility audit or formal review?

5. Technology and tools

• Which communication platforms do you use (video conferencing, learning management systems, parent portals)? 
• Do they support multilingual features or real-time translation? 
• Are you using any AI-powered tools to scale language access?

6. Faculty and staff feedback

• Have faculty and staff shared input on how communication could be improved? 
• Are they using unauthorized tools for language access? 
• Do they feel comfortable using their preferred language at work? 
• Does your campus or school culture support inclusion across language backgrounds?

7. Student and family experience

• How satisfied are students and families with your current communication approach? 
• Do you provide multilingual support and resources for families? 
• Have you gathered feedback about language accessibility?

8. Future needs

• Do you plan to expand programs or serve new communities? 
• Will the language needs of your students or their families change in the next 1–3 years? 
• Are your current systems and strategies built to adapt? 

Next steps 

• Review your answers to identify communication gaps and opportunities. 
• Explore scalable, inclusive solutions like Sorenson Forum for live speech translation and multilingual access. 
• Align your communication strategy with the real needs of your students, families, faculty, and staff. 
• Provide faculty, students, and families training and support for any new tools or processes. 
• Regularly evaluate and evolve your communication approach. 

Client overview

Organization: Grayslake Community High School District 127
Industry: Education
Audience: 2,700 students across 2 high schools
Languages needed: Spanish, Ukrainian, Gujarati, Tagalog, and others

The challenge

Grayslake District 127 had a growing population of multilingual learners—students who spoke little or no English and struggled to follow classroom instruction. The district had limited access to bilingual teaching assistants and faced logistical, staffing, and equity challenges.

Pain points

Unavailable human support

Teachers previously relied on human interpreters sitting beside students in class. But staffing those roles at scale was “nearly impossible,” especially with more than 200 multilingual learners projected to rise to 270 next year.

Classroom disruption

Even when available, in-person interpreters altered the learning environment. “It’s understandably obtrusive to have an adult sitting next to a kid translating out loud,” said Christopher Thieme, Director of IT at Grayslake District 127.

Lost instructional time

Students often had to first develop English language skills before meaningfully engaging with the curriculum—especially in subjects like math and science where immediate understanding was critical.

Patchwork solutions

Translation tools were fragmented. Staff used Google Translate on tablets for documents and Pocketalk for one-on-one conversations, but there was no cohesive solution for live, ongoing instruction.

The solution

Grayslake turned to Sorenson Forum to provide real-time, low-disruption translations and captions directly in the classroom.

How it worked

Flexible language access

Students selected their preferred language on a Chromebook or phone and followed live translations of classroom instruction in audio and captions—starting on day one of enrollment.

Device agnostic

Students used their school-issued Chromebooks or personal mobile devices. Phones often handled the translation stream, freeing Chromebooks for schoolwork.

Scalable across classes

Forum supports simultaneous use by multiple students in the same classroom and across multiple classrooms at once—for example, Grayslake has run sessions with seven students in one class while other classes used it at the same time, without extra staff or hardware.

Quick setup

With minimal training, teachers and staff created sessions supporting 45 languages and dialects in just minutes, replacing hours of interpreter scheduling.

The results

Immediate access to learning

Students no longer had to wait to learn English before joining academic instruction. Forum provided an instant on-ramp to comprehension and engagement.

Improved teaching flexibility

Teachers controlled when to launch sessions and whether to capture transcripts, helping them adapt Forum to their lesson plans.

Stronger inclusion

Multilingual Coordinators reported high trust in Forum, citing its ability to serve students who otherwise had “nothing.” As Christopher Thieme put it:

“This is a resource that allows us to give kids who have nothing a chance at immediately engaging in learning.”

Roadmap for expansion

Next up: using Forum in large gatherings like parent events and assemblies. Administrators plan to offer QR codes so families can hear district leaders in their own languages.

“Forum didn’t just reduce translation gaps—it changed what was possible. For the first time, we have a scalable, respectful, and accessible solution that fits the classroom.”
— Christopher Thieme, Director of IT

Why choose Sorenson Forum?

• Scalable for classrooms: Works for 1:1 instruction, full-group lessons, or school events
• Easy to use: No training required—just share a link and start.
• Minimizes classroom disruption: Students follow instruction quietly on their own devices
• Day-one access: Supports learning from the start in 45 languages/dialects—no wait for fluency or interpreters

Ready to bring inclusive, real-time translation to your school or district?

Visit or schedule a demo today

Any way you look at it, the rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology is transforming daily life. Whether you’ve leaned into AI tools to do your grunt work — from processing data and writing emails to generating your grocery list — or you’re skeptical about allowing machines to do your thinking, there’s no denying the world has flexed its creative muscles over the past few years in finding inventive ways for how to use AI.

An ethical AI use case

One of the most wholesome ideas for how to use AI stems from its ability to learn languages. Machine learning — a category of AI — taps into computers’ ability to quickly process and organize vast amounts of linguistic data. 

That capacity to master vocabulary, pronunciation, and language structure enables AI to convert speech-to-text or text-to-speech in practically any language instantaneously…and simultaneously: a multilingual human translator may be able to convert Japanese to English and English to Spanish, but AI can do both at the same time, making everyday connection across languages possible without planning or expertise.

We’re going to discuss how — and when — you can effectively leverage that power to generate connection, engagement, and understanding with all kinds of people:

• Why you need interpreting, translation, and captioning
• Use cases for real-time translation and captioning
• Choosing the right multilingual solution: when to use AI speech translation vs human interpreters
  • When to use an interpreter
  • When to use AI speech translation
  • Interpreting vs AI translation use case comparison
• Try using AI speech translation for language access

Why you need interpreting, translation, and captioning

The need for fast and reliable language services is no longer a niche demand. Economic and social shifts that drive globalization and multiculturalism have made interpreting and translation services an essential part of doing business and serving the public:

• More than 90% of the world’s population uses languages other than English as a primary language.¹
• Countries that are largely English-speaking also have sizeable numbers of people with different primary languages.
• In the U.S., more than 20% of the population uses a language other than English at home.²
• Roughly 8% of people in the U.K. say their main language is not English.³
• Only about 57% of Canadians list English as their first language. About 20% speak French primarily. The remaining 23% use other languages at home.⁴

Even if you share the same language as the people you’re talking to, captioning is now a mainstream need. Worldwide, 20% of people are Deaf or hard-of-hearing and 15–20% are neurodivergent;^5,6 captions can help them access and process information. Among hearing and neurotypical people, too, numerous studies support the benefits of captioning for comprehension and retention.

The benefits of providing services like interpreting, translation, and captioning come into focus when we view language access as more than transactional. Making it easy for customers, employees, and communities to communicate effectively signals to them that you value their perspectives and engagement.

When the people you work with and serve feel welcome, valued, and respected because you prioritize their access and inclusion, the impact snowballs:

• Productivity and efficiency rise when all parties can communicate quickly and effectively.
• It feeds a culture of belonging that spurs organic engagement.
• Word of mouth generates referrals and positive brand reputation.

Use cases for real-time translation and captioning

The need for captioning and translation services reaches into every sector, easing friction points on both sides of the equation when solutions put people on even footing:
Business: Companies that provide adequate service to linguistically varied and hard-of-hearing populations can tap into a double-digit boost to their customer base. For industries like financial services, retail, and hospitality that cast a wide net, expanding their reach to even half of those people makes an enormous impact.

• Customer support: Instead of hiring multilingual support staff, businesses can integrate real-time captioning and translation into their customer service to support hard-of-hearing and linguistically varied customers.

Beyond customers, supporting employees with captioning and translation expands your talent pool for recruiting and sets teams up for greater productivity.

• Multilingual meetings: It’s not far-fetched, or even unusual, nowadays for an enterprise to collaborate in multinational teams. Employees working together may speak English, Spanish, and Mandarin. Real-time translation makes it possible for companies to pair top talent across borders and cultures, ensuring everyone understands and contributes effectively.
• Training and onboarding employees: Companies with global workforces can use AI translation to provide training materials and live instruction in multiple languages, ensuring consistent knowledge transfer.

Education: In primary and secondary education settings, it’s critical to communicate effectively not only with students but also their families. For post-secondary educational institutions, the overlap of linguistically varied and hard-of-hearing students makes captioning and translation service an indispensable educational tool.

• Supporting international students: Real-time captioning in their primary language can dramatically improve international students’ ability to comprehend and engage with lectures, class discussions, and communicate with professors.
• Providing language access for parents and families: Translate and caption orientations and open houses, parent–teacher conferences, and community events and graduation ceremonies with parents and grandparents.
• Encouraging global collaboration: Open doors to international research partnerships, guest speakers, and prestigious global opportunities for faculty and students.

For a deeper dive, read our blog specifically about the benefits of multilingual captioning in education.

Healthcare: Patients and healthcare providers alike know the frustrations of trying to communicate symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment when they don’t know what each other is saying, not to mention administrative challenges. Captioning in their preferred language can help with some of those challenges, allowing patients and staff to communicate more quickly and accurately for better outcomes.

• Patient consultations and diagnoses: Translation and captioning allows doctors and nurses to communicate more effectively with patients who are hard-of-hearing and/or speak different languages, supporting accurate diagnoses and treatment.
• Communicating medical records and instructions: Hospital and clinic staff using translation and captioning are better equipped to accurately communicate about medical history, patient instructions, and follow-up.

Find more details on the impact of communication accessibility in healthcare in our blog post, Language Accessibility in Breast Cancer Awareness and Treatment.

Event planning: The success of an event rides wholly on participant experience. By providing — and promoting — real-time captioning and translation services for events, organizers can create an inviting experience starting at registration. Event planners can attract more participants by offering accessible communication solutions and follow through with conditions that allow multilingual and hard-of-hearing attendees to fully engage.

• Presentations and panel discussions: Give audiences full access to speeches and discussions by thought leaders with simultaneous translation and captions. Even participants with basic command of the speaker’s language benefit from subtitles for technical or niche subject matter.
• Q&A sessions: Give and take improves events for both attendees and presenters. With simultaneous translation and captioning, your audience can feel more comfortable actively participating and asking questions.

There’s no limit to the examples of everyday communication that can benefit from real-time translation. However, the delivery of translation services must reflect the circumstances for a satisfactory experience; knowing when to use human interpreters versus AI translation makes all the difference in effective communication.

Choosing the right multilingual solution: when to use AI speech translation vs human interpreters

For years, real-time multilingual communication required scheduling an in-person spoken language interpreter. High-speed internet made it possible to receive remote interpreting service via audio/video streaming. Further technological advancement gave rise to the newest option on the scene: AI speech translation. Each of these is a valuable tool when you know how and when to use them.

Interpreter vs translator: what’s the difference?
Real quick, let’s address this common area of confusion. The difference between an interpreter and a translator — or the difference between translation and interpreting — is that

• an interpreter converts one spoken or signed language directly to another spoken or signed language.
• a translator works with written language, converting one written language to another or going from a spoken/signed language to written language (or vice versa).

You might use a human translator for document translation. When you want real-time language support for a conversation, you probably want an interpreter…or the new option, AI speech translation.

When to use an interpreter

Professional interpreters are an irreplaceable communication resource, able to bridge language and culture so people of different backgrounds can connect and understand each other. Sorenson is a global leader in sign language interpreting with more than 20 years of experience providing these services, so we will always advocate the benefits of using qualified interpreters.

Highly skilled interpreters come with an appropriate price tag. When you hire an interpreter, you’re paying for bilingual (or even multilingual) fluency, cultural competence, extensive training, and professional conduct — confidentiality, ethics standards, and reliability.

Some communication warrants, even demands, the cost of interpreting service:

• High stakes communication, including sensitive legal and medical situations
• Technical or jargon-heavy discussions where details are critical
• Emotional interactions
• Performances with verbal elements

The unique ability of professional interpreters to convey nuance — in the form of tone, context, emotion, body language, etc. — and their complex understanding of language gives their service a level of accuracy beyond word-for-word translation that technology cannot imitate.

That human element is most potent in person, and thus the tendency to prioritize onsite interpreting for important conversations: doctor appointments and legal proceedings, for example.

However, remote interpreting — via internet or phone connection — can provide a similar level of nuance with the flexibility and lower cost of virtual access. For example, Sorenson’s scheduled and on-demand sign language Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) services work for face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid conversations and require less planning ahead than onsite interpreting services.

When to use AI speech translation

AI speech translation services, like Sorenson Forum, elevate convenience and affordability to make multilingual communication accessibility an everyday solution rather than an occasional one.

How well can AI translate languages? Well, language processing is one of the areas where AI’s speed and consistency shine.

• AI can learn an entire language in a day, compared to the years it takes humans to become fluent.
• A single AI speech translation product can instantaneously translate dozens of languages, reducing costs and streamlining logistics.
• An AI language translator doesn’t sleep, expect weekends off, or observe holidays; it’s available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with no need to schedule service.

Sorenson Forum is an AI translation service that is making multilingual accessibility affordable and scalable. It uses the most advanced speech recognition software and AI language models to convert speech to text and translate languages in real time, displaying captions in dozens of languages — even simultaneously. With AI text-to-speech functionality, users can listen to the translation as well as read the captions. Bonus: the transcript is available for distribution afterward in every language users used during the session.

The benefits of AI translation services make it possible for businesses and organizations to connect with people regardless of their language at a fraction of the cost of using human interpreters. That makes it practical and affordable to be accessible not only for critical communications, but the everyday interactions that build community and affinity. However, the technology isn’t an ideal fit for every situation.

AI language translators lack the human touch: the ability to convey nuance like tone, inflection, emphasis, emotion, body language — the elements of communication that add context to what we say. That requires a qualified interpreter.

Still, there are many applications for real-time AI speech translation that lean into the technology’s strengths to amplify engagement and inclusion at a fraction of the cost of interpreting services:

• Conferences and events
• Meetings
• Classes, training, and information sessions

An AI language translator will provide the best user experience when the value is in what you’re saying rather than how you’re saying it.

Interpreting vs AI translation use case comparison

Now that we’ve reviewed the strengths and ideal uses of professional interpreters and AI speech translation, let’s look at examples of how and when each might be useful across different settings.

Business 

Invest in interpreting for:

• formal presentations to key decision-makers
• negotiating terms of contracts and agreements
• communication with Deaf clients or colleagues who use sign language

Leverage AI speech translation for:

• team meetings and planning sessions
• routine customer service
• public announcements

Education

Invest in interpreting for:

• serious disciplinary discussions
• Individual Education Program (IEP) conferences
• communication with Deaf students or parents who use sign language

Leverage AI speech translation for:

• classes and lectures, including transcripts
• assemblies and community events
• routine parent–teacher conferences

Healthcare 

Invest in interpreting for:

• patient exams and consultations
• discussing diagnoses and treatment
• communication with Deaf patients who use sign language

Leverage AI speech translation for:

• administrative communication
• educating patients or the public about preventative health measures

Event planning 

Invest in interpreting for:

• emotional presentations or performances
• communication with Deaf participants who use sign language

Leverage AI speech translation for:

• opening/closing remarks and orientation
• informational presentations and panel discussions
• Q&A sessions

Why to use interpreters with Deaf people who use sign language 

We always recommend offering sign language interpreting to communicate with Deaf individuals who are native sign language users. While some deaf people can get by with captioning — and some deaf people do not use sign language at all and may prefer captioning — for native sign language users, those captions are in a second language rather than their preferred one.

American Sign Language (ASL), for example, has an entirely different linguistic structure than English. Providing an equitable experience for ASL users requires offering communication in ASL, which real-time speech translation does not accommodate…yet.

Sorenson is the global leader in sign language interpreting services and can provide scheduled or on-demand ASL interpreters anywhere in the U.S.

See ASL interpreting options

Now that you know how to use AI for language access, are you ready to try it?

If you’ve made it this far, chances are you see the potential to leverage real-time AI speech translation to transform how you engage with your community — locally and globally — without breaking the bank or adding logistical challenges. And that’s the idea: language accessibility that’s seamless and affordable.

If you’re ready to give Sorenson Forum a try, you can sign up for a free trial or dive right into a premium package with all the bells and whistles.

Get started with Sorenson Forum

Sources

1. Exclusion of the non-English-speaking world from the scientific literature: Recommendations for change for addiction journals and publishers
2. 2023 American Community Survey
3. Language in England and Wales
4. Statistics on official languages in Canada
5. World Report on Hearing
6. Embracing Neurodiversity at Work: Unleashing America’s Largest Untapped Talent Pool