Suggestion for Improving the Interpretation Feature in Zoom | Community
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Newcomer
April 1, 2025
Question

Suggestion for Improving the Interpretation Feature in Zoom

  • April 1, 2025
  • 1 reply
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Dear Zoom Team,

I am writing to suggest an improvement to the language interpretation feature in Zoom. I work with multilingual meetings where interpreters often need to temporarily address the main room — for example, to ask the speaker a question, make a clarification, or assist the host in real time.

Currently, when interpreters are assigned to a language channel, their voice is not heard in the main room. To be heard, they must manually leave their interpretation channel (by selecting "Off" in the Interpretation menu), speak, and then rejoin their assigned language. While this workaround exists, it is inconvenient, disruptive, and technically confusing for many interpreters — especially in fast-paced meetings.

Suggested Improvement:
Please consider adding a simple toggle for interpreters that allows them to:

Temporarily speak to the main room (all participants),

And then return to their interpretation channel with one click or shortcut.

This would preserve the clean separation of language channels during normal interpretation, while giving interpreters a controlled and intuitive way to interact with the main meeting when needed.

This small improvement would greatly enhance the flexibility and professionalism of multilingual meetings and better support global communication.

Thank you for considering this feature!

Kind regards,

1 reply

storyhub
Community Super Champion | Customer
Community Super Champion | Customer
May 9, 2025

As an audio and broadcast engineer I can tell you that computer audio can be very complicated. The interpretation feature is intended for translation only and not to talk back to the host or current speaker. If the translator needs to often talk to the host or speaker consider having the translator use a second device with the camera off to communicate by simply unmuting that device. It can be something as simple as using a mobile device.