Two audiences, two plans
A university hosts two kinds of multilingual event, and they need different preparation.
The first is academic: lectures, symposia and conferences. Here the vocabulary is the challenge. A lecture in materials science or Islamic finance is full of terms that general machine interpretation may not know. The answer is preparation: slides, abstracts and a term list from the faculty, loaded into the glossary, and for the most technical sessions, Precision mode.
The second is community: open days, orientation, parent evenings and graduation. Here the vocabulary is simpler but the audience is broader. A school in Sharjah may have parents who speak Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Filipino and English. Offering their languages tells families they are welcome.
An example from Abu Dhabi
A university in Abu Dhabi hosts a two-day academic conference on renewable energy, followed by a public evening lecture.
- Conference sessions: English and Arabic presentations, with panels that switch between the two. Channels in Arabic, English, French and Mandarin for international delegates.
- Glossary: speakers’ names and affiliations, project names, and around two hundred technical terms supplied by the organising faculty.
- Public lecture: the same set-up, with the QR projected on the holding slide and captions on by default for students in the audience.
- Afterwards: the faculty uploads the recordings with subtitle files to the university’s learning platform, and uses the transcripts to prepare the conference proceedings.
Captions as an access tool
Live captions help more people than those who need another language. They help students following a lecture in their second or third language, students who are hard of hearing, and anyone sitting at the back of a large hall. Every caption line can show the speaker’s original words with one tap, which suits language learners who want to check a term in the original.
What faculty and administrators receive
| Deliverable | Use on campus |
|---|---|
| Transcripts per language (.docx, .xlsx) | Study notes, proceedings, accessibility support |
| Subtitle files | Lecture recordings on the learning platform |
| Recordings per language | Students who missed the session |
| Usage report | Which languages students and families chose |
See transcripts and records for the full detail of each format.
Read further
For French-speaking visiting faculty and North and West African students, see our notes on French interpretation. If you are new to the idea, start with what live AI interpretation is and how it differs from human interpretation.