Simultaneous Language Interpretation for Stake Conference Webcast

Our January 2021 stake conference will be broadcast via Meetinghouse Webcast to all member homes, and we have a need for simultaneous Spanish interpretation. Is there a good way for us to provide a second Webcast stream that has the same video as the main Webcast stream but with Spanish audio?

(For interpretation during non-pandemic times, we use traditional wireless headsets and a simultaneous interpreter all in the same building as the conference.)

It would help to know a little more about your current webcasting setup.

In another thread i mentioned that my setup uses a jtech encoder device to broadcast the stream to the churches webcast portal. The jtech encoder has the ability to simultaneously push a MPEG Transport Stream of the feed to the churches local IP network. I used a clerk computer running OBS to capture the TS stream, add captions, and then broadcast the captioned feed to a second scheduled event on the churches webcast portal.

I’m sure you could have your translator speak into a computer microphone connected to a clerk computer and have a language translation feed.

Deleted account wrote:Basic Overview: When hosting a Zoom Webinar (assuming all options have been configured/enabled) you'll make your designated interpreter a panelist, and assign them as an interpreter. Upon doing so, you assign which language. Once completed, all attendees will be able to select from a drop-down menu which language they wish to listen to. The interpreter will hear the live English spoken program, while they translate it into their mic, their mic will be feeding the Spanish audio channel to those who have selected it.

Very cool. Two questions:

Can you have two interpreters for one language so they can trade off?

Are there any tools to work with ASL?

RussellHltn wrote: Can you have two interpreters for one language so they can trade off?

Yes. We have a Spanish ward in our stake and have been using Zoom webinar for several months for our sacrament meetings. You can designate multiple interpreters and both can be active on the same language channel at the same time. They just need to coordinate between each other who is the active speaker.
One tip we have discovered...sometimes the translator is unable to get into the practice session and automatically assigned as the interpreter, even though they are configured in the webinar. We discovered that it works best if they are a Zoom user. When they have a free Zoom account linked to their email address, getting into the pre-meeting and being correctly assigned as a translator has been flawless for us. It works really well.
If they are unable to join the practice session or not automatically assigned, you will need to promote them from an attendee and then manually assign them as an interpreter after starting the broadcast.

I have a church zoom account and would like to get the language interpretation feature enabled. I contacted support and was told I need written confirmation from the account admin/owner I can have that feature. Does anyone have any idea how to go about doing that?

noahariley wrote:I have a church zoom account and would like to get the language interpretation feature enabled. I contacted support and was told I need written confirmation from the account admin/owner I can have that feature. Does anyone have any idea how to go about doing that?

It's already enabled on the account, but you need to enable it for your ward/stake license. Log in on the Zoom website. Go to Settings. In the "In Meeting (Advanced)" section, look for Language Interpretation. Enable that. There are 9 default languages. You can add additional if needed.
Once you have done that, you can schedule a meeting or webinar and check the "Enable language interpretation" option. Add the interpreters for each language and you are good to go. They should have a Zoom account (free account is ok) and be logged in with the email address you supplied in the meeting configuration. They will then appear in the meeting as an interpreter. You need to start language interpretation in the meeting through that option on the toolbar (globe icon). That will enable the additional audio channel(s). It's a great feature. We used it today for our stake conference.

It's already enabled on the account, but you need to enable it for your ward/stake license.

Thanks! I was also struggling with Zoom support and trying to get this feature enabled on our unit account, without realizing it's already in place. I'm grateful the Church by default has made this available (even though you'd have to dig around to notice, or happen to participate here on the Tech Forums)

swigginton wrote:It's already enabled on the account

Thank you for helping us not "reinvent the wheel!" We have our Stake Conference this month, and we were planning on running parallel systems, but this is so much better.
Here are the official instructions for using this feature:
https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articl ... d-Webinars

Awesome - just what I needed. I'm coming up on my first Stake conference since the end of webcasting (last February, I ran bilingual stake conference by using two RTMP streams over the older webcast system - but Zoom doesn't allow for RTMP input). So my original thoughts had been to use an HDMI splitter and 2 HDMI->USB adapters (would require 3 computers in my setup, 2 for the identical two video feeds into two separate webinars, and a third for the translator on the second webinar since the translation is not happening in the same room as the video input). After some googling, I then tried to enable "Joining different meetings simultaneously", (would simplify the video setup if just one computer can feed the same video to two separate webinars, although that computer can't be the host of either webinar; while still using a separate computer for the translator), but when contacting Zoom support, they said that enabling that feature requires knowing the Account Owner's email address, and that appears to be intentionally not listed in this forum. But while searching this forum, I discovered this feature of "Language Interpretation", which is even better (just 1 webinar instead of 2, and still just two computers). I'm hoping that the keywords in my reply might help someone else in the same boat.

We did multiple languages back in April over Zoom. We used the language Interpreter feature and invited specific people for specific languages. We created a little help screen before stake conference that explained that if you would like to hear it in another language, how to change the audio feed. I got an overwhelming amount of thank you's from people in our Stake who during the whole pandemic had either struggled or didn't watch because they couldn't understand well enough and no other options were made available at that time.

I wish it would notify somehow who is connected to what language, because we had an interpreter for a language that only a small congregation would have joined, and when looking at the attendee's list, no one from the congregation ended up joining, so it would have been nice for him to know if he needed to interpret the whole time or not.

I do wish there was a way for YouTube live streaming to be able to either handle 1 stream with multiple languages or be able to easily provide a video stream, and then the individuals who interpret could come to another portal and interpret for that language, on another stream. I have in my mind how I could accomplish it, but that would mean multiple streams from one internet connection, and we don't have the fastest upload to be able to support that.

Rather than using two HDMI to USB adaptors have OBS studio on the primary computer, output NDI video, and receive NDI video on the two language computers. This is if you need to support three RTMP streams such as streaming to YTL. For our Stake with English, Korean, and Spanish we use Zoom's Interpreter function. to encode the translation language. This requires a computer for each language. Zoom natively passes the video and room audio to the translation machines.

Here is the updated information from our most recent conference. http://www.federalwaystake.net/Hosting

Enjoy.