Akshman Rathnam, Founder and CEO of Wordly, the AI-driven, 60+ language meeting interpretation company, had a revelation early in the company’s seven-year journey: “Clients were saying to us, ‘What are you doing to hear us?’ — not asking for passive access to (usually English-language-using) presenters.” Essentially, they were asking for multilingual tools to offer engagement, empowerment, active participation, real belonging, and recognition: in other words, genuine inclusion. This is so much more powerful than an audience member listening to or reading text in their native language, incredibly valuable though that is, of course.
Rathnam highlights the importance of multilingual transcripts and summaries, especially when communicating what happened at the event to colleagues back in the office or to academic peers who couldn’t afford to attend in person. AI multilingual tools have also unlocked the ability to follow text or listen in a delegate’s native tongue for any session taking place anywhere within a conference’s precincts – suddenly, the physical constraints of a conference room’s capacity are broken.
This is the future: no need for complicated equipment (just use your own smart phone and ear-buds); the possibility for all attendees to contribute fluently in interactive sessions, the ability to reach valuable new potential attendees and speakers who currently feel excluded by lack of knowledge of a particular language (not just English!), and new operational flexibility for organisers and participants alike. Once they experience a well-designed, genuinely multilingual event, who would want to go back to the old ways of doing things? As Rathnam predicts: “This has to be the default.”
