Wordly, the leading provider of live AI translation and captions, today released the 2024 State of Live AI Translation, a comprehensive global study into the use of live translation at multilingual meetings and events. The report provides deep insights from meeting and event planners into trends for multilingual meetings, the use of live translation at events, and the impact of AI on multilingual meetings. The demand for live AI translation is increasing exponentially as reported in a recent Wordly announcement.
The findings illustrate the demand for live translation is increasing and organizations are turning to AI translation to bridge the language gap often present at corporate events, local government meetings, industry conferences, and religious services. The top benefits for AI translation include increased attendee comprehension and more inclusive experiences. 97% report that increasing inclusivity and accessibility is a priority for their events.
Some key statistics from the report include:
Frequency of multilingual meetings and events increasing
- 79% report the number of non-first-language English speaking attendees increasing
- 88% report having 2 or more non-English languages spoken among event attendees; 40% report 6 or more languages
- 53% report at least one-fourth of attendees aren’t first-language English speakers
Use of live translation is high and growing
- 58% report they have significant experience using interpretation / translation services at their meetings and events
- Two-thirds (69%) regularly offer interpretation or captioning services at their events
- Three-quarters (77%) report they are increasing their level of offering live translation / captioning
Use of AI translation is increasing
- 62% have experience with AI translation
- Wide range of AI translation uses – #1 – 70% for employee meetings / training; #2 – 66% for customer meetings / training; #3 – 63% for conference keynotes; #4 – 55% for conference breakouts / panels
- 82% who don’t currently use AI are currently or planning to evaluate
AI is getting better and delivers higher ROI
- 96% report AI delivers higher ROI than human translators. Top benefits include: #1 – Save time (64%); #2 – Reduce cost (60%); #3 – Simplify logistics (54%)
- 95% report the quality of AI has increased in the past year
AI translation capabilities wish list
- The top top features wanted in live AI translation solutions include: #1 – 24/7 availability (48%); #2 – Quality comparable to human interpreters (48%); #3 – Event platform integrations (45%); #4 – Text transcripts for all languages (44%); #5 – Support for dozens of languages (42%)
“While generative AI gets most of the headlines, other forms of AI, like neural machine translation, have a longer history and can quickly provide a large impact on productivity and inclusion,” said Dave Deasy, CMO at Wordly. “Using AI to create an image of a dog on a surfboard in Hawaii is pretty cool, but does that really help a business run better? “Wordly is using AI to make it easier and more affordable for organizations to enable everyone to communicate in their preferred language – which provides an immediate benefit to organizations of all sizes.”
The full results of the study are available at Wordly AI Translation Research Report.
About the Research
The survey was managed by Dimensional Research from April 30 to May 9, 2024 to 205 marketing and sales professionals with responsibility for managing meetings and events equally split between the US and UK. Respondents worked for companies across a wide range of industries and had responsibility for managing business events with more than 100 attendees where more than 10% of participants did not speak English as their first language. For more information about Dimensional, visit https://dimensionalresearch.com.
About Wordly
Wordly provides live AI translation and captions for dozens of languages, making meetings and events more inclusive, accessible, and engaging. The Wordly platform does not require human interpreters or special equipment – making it easier and more affordable to communicate across multiple languages. Wordly is used for in-person and virtual sessions by over 3 million users at 1,500+ organizations worldwide across a wide range of industries, including corporate, non-profits, govtech, eventtech, edtech, and religious groups. For more information on Wordly, visit https://www.wordly.ai.
