When a quote for simultaneous interpretation arrives, most of it is not interpretation. It is the logistics of moving one voice from a booth to an ear. Knowing which line is which is the difference between negotiating the quote and accepting it.
The lines, and what each one is actually for
The booth. An ISO-standard interpreter booth exists so the interpreter does not hear their own voice bleeding back. It is quoted per language per day, it needs rigging and de-rigging with the technician hours that go with it, and it takes floor space you were probably selling to a sponsor.
The console and transmitter. One console to switch channels, one infrared or radio transmitter to carry them. This is a fixed cost that barely moves with the size of the event, which makes it the cheapest line to ignore and the least worth negotiating.
The receivers. One per attendee, quoted per unit per day. This is the line that grows with your headcount, and it grows whether or not people collect them. Losses are invoiced.
The people. Somebody has to stand at the door handing receivers out, and somebody has to stand there afterwards counting them back in. At a conference with several sessions, that is a shift, not an errand.
The interpreters. Two per language. Not one. Two. Simultaneous interpretation is cognitively brutal and the profession’s own working standard is a relief every twenty to thirty minutes. This is the line people forget when they estimate, and it is the one that doubles.
Why the third language breaks the budget
Because the cost does not rise gently, it steps. A second language adds a booth, two interpreters and a channel. So does a third. There is no economy of scale anywhere in the list, which is why almost every event you have ever been to offered interpretation into one language and nothing else, not because nobody needed a third, but because the third was a step nobody could justify.
The people who needed it were in the room. They simply attended without participating.
What you can stop renting, and what you cannot
The receivers, the transmitter and the person at the door exist to move audio to an ear. If everybody in the room is already carrying a device with a screen and earphones, that whole block of the quote has no job left to do: attendees scan a code, pick a language and read (or have the phone read it aloud) on hardware you did not buy, charge or count.
What you cannot replace by deleting lines is judgement. In a negotiation where a badly chosen word has contractual consequences, you want a person in a booth, and the argument for one has nothing to do with cost. The honest framing is that automatic translation replaces the interpretation nobody budgets for (the second, third and fourth language of almost every event) not the interpretation that is budgeted for a reason.
Three questions to put to your AV supplier
- Is the receiver count fixed? Ask what happens if attendance grows the week before. Usually the answer is that it was closed weeks ago.
- What is the real per-language step? Booth plus two interpreters plus a channel, per day. Get it as one number and the decision about a third language becomes arithmetic instead of a feeling.
- What does anyone hard of hearing get? Interpretation solves language, not access. If the answer is “nothing”, you have two problems and you are only quoting for one.
If you want to run the arithmetic for your own event rather than ours, there is a calculator for it, and a longer piece on the four real options. Booth, consecutive, automatic, and doing nothing, which is the option most events take without deciding it.