Making Company All-Hands Meetings Multilingual
Making an all-hands or town hall multilingual requires treating the in-room audience and the online stream as two separate problems. Meeting-app translated captions work for people watching online, but they don't reach anyone sitting in the room.
Companies scaling global hiring often miss this gap and run monthly all-hands for months before noticing. Below, we walk through what to do for each audience and how a live translation tool fits alongside your meeting app rather than replacing it.
Why all-hands meetings need multilingual support in the first place
As companies open offices abroad and hire more broadly, a single shared language stops reaching everyone. All-hands meetings are exactly where this matters most: strategy updates and company results are meant to land with the whole company at the same time, so leaving part of the audience behind is a real cost.
Most companies start by translating slides into two languages. That helps, but it doesn't cover what actually happens in the room — Q&A, ad-libbed context from an executive, questions from the floor.
The in-room audience and the online audience need different things
Most all-hands meetings are hybrid: some employees gather at headquarters while others join a video call from another office or from home. Those two groups need genuinely different language support.
Online attendees
Because they're watching through the meeting app itself, they can typically use whatever translated captioning or live-caption feature that app provides. Most mainstream video conferencing tools offer some form of real-time translated captions today.
In-room attendees
If the room just projects the video call screen, the captions are often too small to read from the back, and many companies don't even bother projecting the call into the room at all. In-room attendees need their own, independent language support — the video call's captions were never built for them.
The gap that gets missed: once translated captions are working for the livestream, it's easy to assume "multilingual support: done" — while visiting staff from an overseas office, interns, or employees who aren't fluent in the meeting's language sit in the room every month with no support at all.
What meeting-app translation actually covers
Meeting-app translated captions are built for people who are inside that call. The app transcribes the speaker in real time and renders captions in whichever language each viewer selects. If your all-hands only has online attendees, this alone can be enough.
The catch is that this feature is designed around "someone in the call," not "someone in the room." You can project the captions on a big screen at the venue, but attendees can't each pick their own language, and the set of supported languages is often limited to whatever the app offers.
Comparing ways to add language support in the room
The in-room audience needs a solution outside the meeting app. Here's how the main options compare.
| Option | Cost | Setup effort | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project the meeting app's captions on-screen | Included in existing meeting-app subscription | Low | When a basic, shared display is enough |
| Book a human interpreter for the room | Hundreds to low thousands of dollars per session | Advance booking, briefing materials | Executive remarks, high-stakes monthly meetings |
| Stream AI translation to each attendee's phone | From a few dollars per short session | Device and a QR code | Recurring, in-room all-hands |
Projecting captions is easy to set up but doesn't let attendees choose their own language and can be hard to read from the back of a large room. A human interpreter is the most accurate option, but booking one every month adds up fast. Streaming translated captions and audio to each attendee's own phone isn't limited by room layout or seat count, which makes it a good match for a recurring monthly meeting.
How to roll this out
- Map out which languages your in-room attendees actually need. Check who's visiting from other offices, who's an intern, and who isn't fully comfortable in the meeting's primary language.
- Confirm your in-room-to-online ratio. For a hybrid meeting, plan on the meeting app's translation handling online attendees and a separate tool handling the room.
- Estimate the real annual cost. Compare booking interpreters every month against a per-session AI translation tool over a full year of meetings.
- Pilot it once before committing. Try in-room translation at your next all-hands as a small test and gauge attendee feedback before making it standard.
VoxFlight: an option for the in-room audience at your all-hands
VoxFlight is a live translation service built for small, in-person events. The organizer starts a session from an iPhone and displays a QR code at the venue. In-room attendees scan it with their phone's browser and get translated captions and translated audio in their own language — a solution for the room that runs alongside, not instead of, your meeting app's own translation feature.
A recurring meeting like a monthly all-hands fits well with a short, repeatable setup each time. Pricing shown below is planned pricing ahead of full public launch. Once paid purchase is available, the App Store processes payment when a session pass is purchased; the purchased pass is consumed when translation starts.
| Plan | 1 language | 2 languages | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 minutes / 50 attendees | ¥980 | ¥1,780 | Up to 50 attendees |
| 60 minutes / 50 attendees | ¥3,980 | ¥6,980 | Up to 50 attendees |
| 60 minutes / 100 attendees | ¥5,980 | ¥9,980 | Up to 100 attendees |
For two target languages, the complete two-language pass is purchased once in the App Store for the same duration and attendee limit. It is not an add-on after buying a one-language pass, and the total is shown before purchase.
VoxFlight is currently in pre-launch preparation. Prices above are planned pricing; Two-language passes are included in the planned launch pricing.
That said, it isn't the right fit for everything. Panel-style Q&A where several people talk over each other, meetings handling extremely sensitive material, and large events that need a dedicated interpreting team are all better served elsewhere. For the sequential, one-speaker-at-a-time format most all-hands actually use — leadership updates, department reports — it's worth considering for the room.
Frequently asked questions
If we turn on translated captions for the livestream, is that enough for a multilingual all-hands?
That covers people watching online, but attendees sitting in the room usually aren't looking at the stream, so they need a separate solution. Plan the in-room audience and the online audience as two different problems.
How much does it cost to make a monthly all-hands multilingual?
It depends heavily on the method. Meeting-app translation features are usually a flat subscription. Booking human interpreters every month can run into the thousands of dollars a year. Adding translation just for the in-room audience, on a per-session basis, can start at just a few dollars per meeting.
Can this be used for sensitive content, like an executive's remarks?
VoxFlight-managed databases and storage do not permanently retain raw or translated audio. External-provider processing and retention terms are described in the Privacy Policy. For especially sensitive content, check with your internal information-security policy before using any third-party tool.
Does it work for Q&A, where multiple people take turns speaking?
It works well as long as one person speaks at a time. It isn't a good fit for panel-style crosstalk where multiple people speak over each other — have a moderator keep speakers sequential instead.