Members of Parliament serve constituents who speak many different languages and 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.

---

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.

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.

Internet/Mobile Apps

Internet/mobile apps can be useful for quick translations where you need the gist of something quickly, rather than a definitive translation.

Say Hi is a mobile app which requires an Internet connection: https://www.sayhi.com/en/translate/

Siri is built into Apple IOS devices and you can ask it simple questions such as “How do I say in French…”

Google Translate is an online text translator: https://translate.google.co.uk/ and there is also a mobile app.