For decades, there was really only one way to translate a live event: hire human interpreters, put them in a booth, and hope the budget and the schedule both hold up. Today, that is no longer the only option, and for a growing number of events, it is not even the best one.
The real cost of human interpretation
Booking professional simultaneous interpreters is not just about an hourly rate. It usually means:
Two interpreters per language, since simultaneous interpretation is mentally exhausting and professionals typically rotate every 20 to 30 minutes. Booth equipment rental, soundproofing, and technical setup, often requiring a specialized AV vendor. Travel and accommodation if interpreters are not local to the event. Advance booking, often weeks ahead, with limited flexibility if your speaker list or language needs change last minute. And per-language multiplication: need English, Spanish and Mandarin covered? That is three separate interpreter teams, three booths, three sets of logistics.
For a large international summit with a dedicated AV budget, this can make sense. But for the vast majority of events, a 150-person product launch, a regional conference, a one-day summit, a startup demo day, the math simply does not work. The cost of interpretation can rival or exceed every other line item in the event budget combined, for content that might only need translating into one or two languages.
Where human interpretation genuinely still wins
To be fair, this is not a case of "AI is always better." Human interpreters bring something AI still cannot fully replicate: contextual judgment in extremely high-stakes, nuance-heavy settings. Think diplomatic negotiations, live legal proceedings, or moments where tone and political sensitivity matter as much as the literal words. If your event falls into that category, a professional human interpreter is worth every euro.
Where SaaS translation platforms make more sense
For everything else, and that is most events, an AI-powered platform like Glot solves the same core problem, audience understanding, without the same overhead.
No advance booking bottleneck. Add a new language, add a session, change the schedule, and the AI adapts without needing a new team of interpreters lined up.
Instant scalability. Whether your event has 50 attendees or 5,000, and whether they need 2 languages or 12, the platform scales without multiplying cost the way human staffing does.
Consistent quality across every session, without depending on which interpreter happened to be assigned to which room, or how tired they are by hour six of a conference day.
A fraction of the cost, freeing up budget for the parts of the event that actually differentiate it: speakers, production, experience. You can see exactly what that looks like on our pricing page.
Faster, simpler logistics. No booths, no headsets to hand out and collect, no backstage coordination with interpreter teams. Attendees scan a QR code and get translated captions or audio on the device they already have in their pocket.
The real question to ask
The right question for organizers is not "AI or human, which is better in the abstract." It is "what does this specific event actually need." A 300-person tech conference with attendees from a dozen countries does not need diplomatic-grade interpretation. It needs fast, accurate, affordable access to what is being said on stage, for everyone in the room, in the language they are most comfortable with.
For that use case, which describes the large majority of conferences, summits and corporate events, a SaaS platform is no longer the compromise option. It is often simply the smarter one.
Curious what event translation looks like without the interpreter-booth overhead?
See how Glot works