Remote interpreting
online or over the phone
A supplier in the Saarland, a client abroad, a counterpart on another continent: the interpreter joins your online room or links you by telephone. The meter starts at one hour, two days' notice covers most languages, and travel appears nowhere.
1 hr
Minimum billed
48 h
Usual notice to book
0
Travel costs, in every case
70+
Languages reachable online
What gets settled without leaving your desk
Only two carriers: the online room you already use, or a plain telephone line. Everything else turns on the duration and on how many voices are active.
Meeting by video call
You send the link, the interpreter joins and works in short stretches of speech. Teams, Zoom, Meet, Webex: we fit around you, and our own tool is never forced on you.
A separate channel for simultaneous
Where the platform offers several audio tracks, each person picks a language from a list and the programme runs to time. Two interpreters per language then become necessary again, exactly as in a booth.
Three-way call
No camera, no link, no set-up: the interpreter puts the telephone call together between you and your counterpart. It is the quickest arrangement to trigger.
Recurring appointments
A board that sits once a month, a weekly catch-up with a subsidiary, the running of a project straddling two countries. The same voice returns session after session, and in the end she has a firmer grip on the file than half the room.
Rare pairs
Since the interpreter works from where she lives, a language unavailable locally becomes reachable again. Notice is then counted in days instead of weeks.
Something unplanned in the day
Someone turns up and there is no shared language, or a call cannot wait. We look for whoever is free right away, and we say plainly if the search fails.
For twenty minutes, the journey costs more
Twenty minutes on the line with a supplier in Trier. A shared call with a notary's office on the far side of the border. One point to clear up with a tenant who has neither French nor German. None of that justifies a car journey, and still less a half-day fee.
Work online and the clock opens at one hour, then tracks what the session actually ran to. No mileage, no travel allowance, no half-day minimum lurking in the small print. Finish ahead of schedule and the invoice says so.
The format also opens up languages that cannot be found within a hundred kilometres, since the interpreter stays at home. What used to take weeks of searching in person is settled in forty-eight hours.
- Billed from one hour, not from half a day
- Your usual platform, not ours
- Technical check before the session, included
- No mileage, no travel allowance
Where a screen does the job, and where it fails
The format has real weaknesses, and it is better to know them when you book than once the session has opened.
Nothing to pay for travel
No mileage, no hours on the road, no half-day floor. On a thirty-minute appointment, the gap with an on-site visit is plain to see.
A more flexible diary
Two days' notice works in most pairs, where a physical presence calls for five or more. A late change of date is also easier to absorb.
The pool widens
The interpreter no longer needs to live in the country. Pairs that geography made impossible become workable from one day to the next.
Sessions you have to attend
A hearing, a deed before a notary, a mediation, bad news to deliver: nothing replaces being there. Silences do not travel down a connection, and neither does a face.
It is sound, not picture, that holds a remote session together. One headset per participant brings more than a high-end camera, and the ceiling microphone of a meeting room is precisely what puts the interpreter in difficulty, above all when two people talk over each other. The ten minutes of technical check we offer before every session are not billed: they prevent nearly every incident.
Four steps and two days ahead of you
Setting up an online session takes less organising than a journey, and moving it costs far less.
- 01
The slot
Day, start time, likely duration, languages and chosen platform. You can send the link later: it is not part of the booking.
- 02
Technical check
Ten minutes in the interpreter's company, the evening before or shortly before the start: levels, microphones, screen sharing, language channels. Nothing is charged for it.
- 03
The interpreter joins
A few minutes ahead of time she enters the room, introduces herself to everyone and explains in two sentences how speaking turns will work.
- 04
Billed on time used
The first hour counts as the floor. After that it is the real duration of the session that applies, to the minute.
An online appointment this week?
Send the slot, the languages involved and the tool you use. A name and a figure are confirmed before the hour is out.
Six commitments kept online
From one hour
No half-day imposed, no hidden minimum. A forty-minute session is booked as such and billed on the basis of one hour.
Your platform
Teams, Zoom, Meet, Webex, in-house systems: the interpreter fits into your environment. You install no software and create no account.
Check included
Ten minutes beforehand to verify sound levels, microphones and language channels. When a session goes off the rails, almost always nobody ran that check.
A wider pool
Where the interpreter lives no longer weighs on the choice. Difficult pairs come back within reach, and the notice period shrinks.
The same confidentiality
The undertaking matches the one for on-site work. Nothing is recorded on our side, and preparation material disappears once the assignment ends.
No side charges
No mileage, no hire, no platform fee. The quote amounts to an hourly rate and a duration.
Frequently asked questions
Can I book half an hour?
You can book thirty minutes, but billing starts at one hour: below that, preparation and the technical check take longer than the session itself. When several short interviews fall on the same day, it pays to string them together in one slot.
What if the connection drops?
The interpreter holds the line while people come back, and that gap falls outside the billed time. Should the video become hopeless, we fall back on a three-way phone call, which asks almost nothing of a connection.
Can simultaneous work without a booth?
Yes, provided the platform offers separate audio tracks. Each person picks a language from a list and the programme runs to time. As in a booth, it takes two interpreters per language, and the check beforehand is not optional.
Our participants sit in three countries: is that workable?
Here the arrangement earns its keep. Nobody surrenders half a morning to traffic, everyone joins from their own desk, and that matters where something like 220 000 people cross a border on the way to work. Push past two live languages and the platform needs separate tracks; tell us too which of the attendees will genuinely be speaking.
Does it suit a medical consultation?
A follow-up appointment, walking through a prescription, fixing a date: yes, and in a thinly spoken language it may be the only way anything happens at all. Breaking bad news or working through a painful conversation calls for a person in the room, because some exchanges do not survive a screen.
Get your free quote within the hour
A document or a date is all we need. You get the price, the deadline and the form of certification Luxembourg authorities will expect. You decide afterwards.