Members of Parliament serve constituents who speak many different languages and whilst some people may bring a friend with them, or you may have some local community groups who may be able to help, sometimes it is necessary to engage the services of an interpreter or a translation service.
The House of Commons does not provide interpretation and translation services, but the cost of engaging such services can be covered by IPSA under ‘translation services. ‘
The services below are ones which have been suggested by MPs’ staff. You could also search for translators and interpreters local to you on yell.com
The Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office can help you to find an interpreter abroad. See this website: Find a translator or interpreter abroad
Please note that reference to a site or service here should not imply an endorsement and we cannot be responsible for anything on third party sites.
These organisations can help you to find an interpreter near you:
Chartered Institute of Linguists
https://www.ciol.org.uk/find-a-linguist
Institute of Translation and Interpreting
https://www.iti.org.uk/find-professional-translator-interpreter/find-a-language-service-provider.html
British Sign Language
National Register of Communication Professionals working with Deaf and Deafblind People
https://www.nrcpd.org.uk/
Action Deafness
https://actiondeafness.org.uk/services/interpreting/
AI Live – provides real-time speech-to-text captioning on Internet-connected devices
https://www.ai-live.com/
Deaf Action
https://deafaction.org/services/communication-interpreting-agency/bsl-english-interpreters/
Royal National Institute for Deaf People
https://rnid.org.uk/information-and-support/support-for-businesses-and-organisations/communicating-staff-customers-deaf-hearing-loss/british-sign-language-bsl-interpreters/
Silent Sounds
https://silent-sounds.co.uk/
Live Services
LanguageLine
https://www.languageline.com/en-gb/
LanguageLine offers live interpreting services in over 240 spoken languages, face-to-face, online, via telephone or via a mobile app. They also provide interpreters for British Sign Language (BSL), either face-to-face or online via video.
LanguageLine also offers translation services such as document translation and website translation in over 190 languages.
Clear Voice
https://clearvoice.org.uk
Clear Voice is a social enterprise which returns 100% of its profits to Migrant Help to help to support refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of modern slavery and victims of human trafficking. Their interpreters have a lot of experience when working with migrants and refugees. They also deliver an innovative education programme called the InPower Project which fully funds unemployed refugees through the education they need to become professional interpreters.
Interpreting Line
https://www.interpretingline.co.uk/home
Interpreting line offers face-to-face, video and telephone translation services for over 250 spoken languages and also British Sign Language (BSL.) They also offer document translation services.
Dialogue Language Services UK
https://dialogueuk.com/
Give Me Your Word
https://www.givemeyourword.co.uk/
Internet/Mobile Apps
Important!
Internet/mobile apps can be useful for quick translations where you need the gist of something quickly, rather than a definitive translation. Online and AI tools do not understand nuance, satire, irony or humour and so cannot match the skills of a human translator, and will not be as accurate. Whenever you need to translate something to be used in a professional or legal context, or something sensitive, you should consider employing the services of a professional interpreter or translator.
There may also be privacy issues using translation apps, as some may require access to personal data. They are not designed to be used for long or complex documents.
Apple Translate
If you have Apple device, you could use the Translate app and Siri, but it has only a small number of languages it can translate – Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.
Activate Siri, and say the word of phrase you wish to translate and the language you want it to be translated into. It will respond with written text and also say the phrase out loud.
Google Translate
Google Translate is s an online text translator: https://translate.google.co.uk/ and there is also a mobile app. It has more than 200 languages available. Select the languages you wish to translate and then either type in the text, or press the microphone button and speak the words or phrases you wish to translate. Google Translate has a photo mode, where you use the phone’s camera to hover over written text and it will provide a translation in one of 37 languages (number correct at at 27 August 2024). It also has a ‘conversation mode’ for some languages.
ChatGPT
https://chatgpt.com/
For information on how to use ChatGPT for translation, please see here: https://www.upwork.com/en-gb/resources/chatgpt-for-translation
Microsoft Translator
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/