Túlka is disrupting the interpreter services market with the help of telecom APIs
Instant, on-demand interpretation services will increase service quality and reduce costs for enterprise customers significantly
In today’s dynamic environment, the need for booking ad-hoc and short meetings or training sessions is on the rise. Organizations are embracing agility, moving away from scheduling lengthy, pre-planned sessions. Quick, on-demand gatherings allow for rapid problem-solving, essential information sharing, and real-time collaboration. In sectors such as healthcare or public administration, ad-hoc conversations are a natural part of business processes. This highlights the relevance of instant setup of high-quality video or voice services that offer an efficient means of communication in our increasingly global and interconnected world.
The rising need for ad-hoc meetings is also reflected in the development of the interpretation services market, which was worth over $9 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of ca. 10% between 2022 and 2028. [1]
The interpreter services market can be categorized into four segments: Remote simultaneous interpretation, telephonic interpretation, in person face-to-face interpretation, document translations and related services. Among these, remote simultaneous interpretation is projected to experience rapid growth through 2031. [1]
The general need for inclusion and integration of people speaking different languages, and the language barriers towards effective communication, represent a significant challenge for many organizations and enterprises around the world. The traditional way to deliver interpreter services typically requires interpreters to be on-site, which means that such services need to be booked well in advance, are billed on an hourly basis, and travel & expense costs need to be covered.
The interpreter services market is evolving towards a very dynamic mode, asking for more flexibility and cost efficiency, but at the same time, accountability for delivered interpretation services needs to be secured. Successful providers of interpretation services therefore need to be agile in adapting their offering and at the same time implement advanced operations based on a high degree of digitalization and automation. In addition, interpretation services must be readily scalable to accommodate a growing array of languages as demand for effective communication arises on a global scale.
Túlka: A Finnish frontrunner disrupting the interpreter services market
Túlka is a leading interpretation service provider in Finland based in Helsinki. During the last five years, the company has grown its business by 10x with the help of its proprietary automation platform. The company was founded in the aftermath of the European migration crisis in 2015. Túlka is a privately owned company and belongs to the Bravedo group of companies.
Túlka addresses the opportunities & challenges within the interpreter services market through a digital platform-based, disruptive service delivery approach, transforming the interpreter services industry. The key to success has been the introduction of instant remote interpretation services which can be ordered instantly, even for very short interpretation services, and which are paid for on a per-minute basis. Compared to traditional, prescheduled, on-site interpretation meetings on an hourly basis, this approach reduces costs, increases flexibility, and thereby lowers purchasing hurdles for customers.
A typical use case in the healthcare sector are general practitioner’s consultative sessions with their patients. Such a session typically takes only 10-15 minutes, but using a traditional interpretation service would require booking a translator for 30 or 60 minutes. Furthermore, consultative sessions may be delayed, patients may come late or miss the appointment completely, leading to payments for interpretations services not fully used. Including administrative costs, customers can save up to 40% of costs when using remote interpreter services compared to traditional, prescheduled, on-site interpretation services.
- Ari Mäkelä, Chief Digital Officer at Túlka
On-demand interpretation services create new value
Remote Meetings are the underlying use case for Túlka’s remote interpreter services offering. Túlka’s digital platform provides remote meeting capabilities for voice and video conferencing used to connect interpreters with customers. The platform matches customer requests for interpretation services with interpreters available to deliver the service and initiates the remote voice- or video meetings when it is time to deliver the service. Customers can order interpretation services through an easy-to-use mobile application.
Remote interpretation services are also increasingly used in remote meetings, particularly in certain market segments such as the public sector, education and healthcare. In its simplest form, an interpreter is booked into a pre-scheduled video conference, but through API (Application Programming Interface) integration with commercial conferencing systems, interpretation services can benefit from a user-friendly handling and can also be ordered instantly. In these cases, matching interpreters with service users and charging and billing of the interpretation service is done by Túlka’s platform, but the actual conference is provided by a 3rd party service provider.
Key to Túlka’s value creation is the digitalization and automation of the interpreter service administration based on a digital service management platform. This includes automatic matchmaking between customers and interpreters, scheduling of remote voice- and video sessions, and collecting all data needed to charge customers for minutes of interpretation services delivered. A very high degree of automation enabling zero-touch operations allows for a very cost-efficient delivery of remote interpretation services.
The actual interpretation service is however delivered by human interpreters, which secures the accountability for the translation services towards customers. This is of particular importance for governmental services such as asylum matters and in healthcare.
The disruptive approach of Túlka lies in its capability to offer instant, on-demand interpretation services, to provide flexibility for customers to order or re-schedule services as needed, to reduce administrative workload for customer and to reduce costs due the “pay per minute of use” model.
Telecom APIs are key to disrupt the interpreter services market
Túlka is offering its instant remote interpretation services based on a cloud-based platform providing all needed functions and services to manage such a service. This includes order & delivery management, scheduling interpretation sessions, charging & billing for interpretation services, call center, customer relationship management (CRM) and human resource (HR) functions.
Management of all communication channels ranging from telephony, eMail and text messaging to video are handled through Vonage API integration. Túlka’s interpreter service platform calls the respective telecom APIs for communication services to set up instant or scheduled connections. Key benefits of leveraging Vonage APIs are the ability to include voice, video and SMS, the availability of advanced reporting data as input for Túlkas charging and billing services. The platform globally aggregates cellular network services and thereby provides the ability to scale and grow the business on demand (see figure 16).
Figure 16: Túlka service platform architecture
The Túlka platform can also be integrated into commercial conferencing platforms. The user interface for ordering interpretation services can be built into such conferencing systems based on a plug-in model, and APIs can be used for the integration with commercial remote meeting and remote education platforms.
Emerging digital tools and telecom APIs are expected to further enhance the digital user experience
The interpretation services market is expected to grow significantly during the next 10 years therefore scalability is key for successful market players. Túlka is disrupting this market with a digital platform-based business model. The development and provisioning of APIs will play a crucial role to further evolve service functionality.
On the business side, the development of a wider ecosystem consisting of interpreters, providers of conferencing platforms, communication service providers, and vendors of communication devices and related operation systems is crucial.
Typical devices used for remote interpretation services include legacy telephones, smart phones & tablets, and devices for video conferencing. Any interpretation service offering will have to follow the development of the devices market and it is expected that extended reality (XR) devices will gain importance in the coming years. 65% of all decision-makers across all industries expect the utilization of XR-devices for remote meetings within the next 3-5 years, and specifically in society-centric organizations, half of the decision-makers expect this to happen. One example is hospital staff in emergency reception where such devices can provide instant guidance for examinations, which could also include instant remote interpretation services.
Remote interpretation services are real-time services. With an increasing share of video-based interpretation services and usage of XR devices, bandwidth and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements on the connectivity side will increase. This will drive the development and provisioning of cellular network APIs enabling interpretation service platforms to order related cellular network services on demand.
Interpretation services are today delivered by human interpreters due to the need for accountability and information privacy, particularly in segments such as healthcare and government services. This will limit a wider usage of automated, AI-based real-time interpretation services, but it can be expected that such systems will gain importance to the extent the accountability and information privacy challenges can be addressed. One such scenario could be to initially provide the human interpreter with generative AI capabilities and thus support the translation work without removing the role of accountability from the interpreter.
