How Much Simultaneous Interpreting Costs at a Conference: Budget by Line Item

An event organizer asks for a simultaneous interpreting quote and gets back a number with no obvious logic behind it: one conference costs RUB 110,000, another RUB 300,000, and at first glance the only difference is the guest count. Below we break the budget down item by item: what exactly the client is paying for, why an interpreter in the booth never works alone, and which line items can be cut without hurting the event.

All prices in this article are SINKHRON PLUS's current 2026 rates. These are not market averages - they are the same figures listed on the simultaneous interpreting page and in the equipment catalogue.

What the budget is made of

An invoice for simultaneous interpreting always has two major parts, and they are calculated independently of each other.

• Interpreters' work. Billed in shifts: up to 4 or up to 8 hours. The rate depends on the language and subject matter, not on the number of listeners in the room.
• Equipment. Billed by audience size and rental days. Twenty people in a meeting room and two hundred in a congress hall call for different kits and different money.

This leads to a counterintuitive fact: doubling the audience does not double the bill. The interpreters cost the same; only the receiving end - headphones and transmitters - gets more expensive. Conversely, adding a second working language almost doubles the budget even though not a single extra person shows up in the room.

Why there are always two simultaneous interpreters

This is the first line item that raises questions: why pay for two interpreters when only one speaker is talking.

Simultaneous interpreting is one of the rare tasks where a person listens and speaks at the same time, running a few seconds behind the speaker, while restructuring each phrase to fit the grammar of another language. That load can only be sustained for a limited time: in international practice, interpreters in the booth switch every 20-30 minutes. What drops after that isn't willingness to keep working but accuracy - numbers and proper names go first, then the links between parts of a sentence. The client doesn't notice; the foreign guest does, immediately.

If the event is short - an hour and a half to two hours for a roundtable - the question resolves itself: you book a shift of up to 4 hours, the cheapest option for live simultaneous interpreting.

How much interpreters' work costs

The rate depends on the language. English is the most common and therefore the most affordable; the rarer the language, the fewer specialists in the country can work in simultaneous mode, and the higher the price.

The gap between English and Arabic is more than one and a half times, and it isn't a markup for exoticism. Moscow has only a few dozen Arabic simultaneous interpreters capable of covering a full eight-hour day on oil and gas or legal subject matter, and their calendars are booked months ahead.

Full price lists for each type are on the simultaneous and consecutive interpreting pages, which list all eight languages with prices.

How much the equipment costs

The other half of the budget is equipment. A simultaneous interpreting kit consists of a transmitter, infrared emitters, and receivers with headphones for each listener. The cost is tied to capacity.

The difference between a 50-person kit and a 10-person whisper kit is sixteenfold, and that's the main source of savings for smaller events. The full contents of each kit are listed in the simultaneous interpreting equipment section.

Room sound reinforcement - microphones, speakers, a mixer - is quoted separately: from RUB 8,000 for a basic setup to RUB 18,000 for a professional one. If the venue already has sound in place, this line item disappears from the budget.

Three real budgets

Now let's put the numbers together. Three typical scenarios that come up most often.

Negotiations with two foreign guests, 3 hours

No booth is needed here: the interpreter works in whispered interpreting mode, and guests listen through compact receivers. This is the most budget-friendly format of live simultaneous interpreting.

Conference for 100 people, two languages, full day

Same room, but three working languages

Add a French booth. The equipment barely changes - the same emitters, just more channels. But the interpreting team doubles: from RUB 45,000 for English plus from RUB 55,000 for French. Total: from RUB 177,000 for the same day in the same room.

What drives the budget up

• A rare language. Arabic, Serbian, Chinese, Japanese - the rate runs one and a half to two times higher than for English.
• Specialized subject matter. Clinical trials, oil refining, patent law all require an interpreter who knows the field. That kind of specialist costs more and needs to be booked in advance.
• Work outside Moscow. The budget picks up travel, accommodation, and a day for equipment logistics.
• Urgency. A request placed a day ahead means the contractor puts together a team from whoever is available, not whoever fits best.
• Evening and night work. Events that run past 10 p.m. are billed at a higher rate.

Where you can save without losing quality

Four choices that genuinely lower the bill without hurting the result.

1. Shorten the shift. If the substantive part fits into three hours, book a shift of up to 4 hours instead of eight: in English, that's RUB 32,000 instead of RUB 45,000.
2. Skip the booth where whispered interpreting is enough. For two or three foreign guests, a whisper kit for RUB 4,000 covers a task that would otherwise call for renting a RUB 45,000 system.
3. Consider a remote format. If part of the audience joins online, the remote interpreting platform removes receiver rental altogether: listeners get the sound straight into their own headphones. More details on the online interpreting page.
4. Send materials in advance. This doesn't cut the bill directly, but it sharply increases the value you get for the same money. Slides, the agenda, a list of names and titles, and industry abbreviations sent two or three days before the event mean the interpreter walks into the booth prepared, instead of decoding your terminology on the fly.

What you should not do is cut corners on the second pair of interpreters or on the number of receivers. In the first case, quality drops by midday; in the second, part of the room ends up without headphones, and everyone notices.

Frequently asked questions

Can equipment be rented without interpreters?

Yes, equipment is rented separately - this is standard practice when the client already has their own interpreters. The kit arrives with a technician who handles setup and keeps the system running throughout the day.

Is setup billed separately?

On-site technical support is included in the kits. What's billed separately are non-standard situations: complex logistics, evening-before setup, or working across several rooms at once.

What if the program runs long?

Time worked beyond the paid shift is billed hourly. Practical advice: if your events regularly run over schedule, it's cheaper to book an eight-hour shift upfront than to pay extra hours on top of a four-hour one.

How far in advance should you book?

English - at least a week ahead; rare languages and peak dates (late May, September, December) - three to four weeks ahead. During peak season, there simply may be no available simultaneous interpreters left with the subject expertise you need.

What to do next

To produce an accurate quote, a contractor needs four things: the date, the number of attendees, the languages, and the length of the program. Everything else - the venue, the format, whether sound is already in place - gets clarified in conversation and affects the number only secondarily.

If you're planning an event, send us those four details and we'll put together a quote for your project. If you're still sorting out the formats, start with the types of interpreting page - it lays out how simultaneous differs from consecutive, and when whispered interpreting is enough.