Hong Kong
The chairman opens in Cantonese, the deck is in English, the guest from Shenzhen follows in Putonghua, and someone flew in from Tokyo. tlive puts one QR code on the screen and lets everyone in the hall read — or hear — the same talk in the language they think in, on the phone already in their pocket.
The problem is rarely that translation is unavailable. It is that translation costs enough to be worth buying for one segment of the day, and no more. All three of these happen in Hong Kong every week.
He knows the story lands better in Cantonese, but there are mainland and overseas guests in the room, so he does the whole thing in English. The numbers still arrive; the part that actually persuades does not. With captions running he stays in Cantonese and the guests read English or written Chinese.
The presenter is fluent. The room is not. The data gets through and the argument does not, and the members who would have asked a question stay quiet. Nothing in the post-event report records this, but it happened.
Four or five languages, a run of short speeches, and the rest of the evening is networking. Nobody builds an interpreter booth for that. Until now the answer was that people would manage.
These are published rate cards, not estimates. They are also the reason most Hong Kong events simply go untranslated.
| Option | Published Hong Kong rate | Billed |
|---|---|---|
| Two simultaneous interpreters, one language pair | Freelance interpreting generally starts at HK$250–400 per hour with a two-hour minimum; conference-grade simultaneous work is quoted by the day and runs far higher | Per interpreter, per day |
| A venue's built-in interpretation system | East Kowloon Cultural Centre lists its simultaneous interpretation system at HK$8,200 per day, available in the Theatre and the Hall only | Per day |
| Rented receivers and headsets | CUHK's Audio Visual Services Unit charges HK$2,570 per three hours including 30 receivers and headphones, then HK$635 per extra hour, HK$20 per extra receiver and HK$430 an hour for a standby technician | Per block, then per head |
| tlive | A three-hour event: about US$17–22 with one translated language, US$33–43 with two, whatever the headcount | Per minute of the event |
tlive is billed by the minute of the event. A three-hour event with two translated languages is roughly US$33–43; with one language, about US$17–22. One link carries up to 250 guests, each on their own phone and earbuds.
An interpreter and tlive are not the same purchase and should not be swapped blindly. A human carries judgement, register and accountability. The FAQ below says plainly when you still want one.
Most live translation tools were built on the assumption that Chinese means Mandarin. In Hong Kong that assumption breaks in the first sentence.
Different vocabulary, different grammar in places, different word order in others. Run Cantonese through a Mandarin model and you get captions that look almost right and mean something else. tlive's default source language is Cantonese, not “Chinese”.
「我哋個 Q3 target 係…」 — Hong Kong business speech is Cantonese with English nouns in it. A recogniser forced to commit to one language per sentence loses either the verbs or the terms.
A Cantonese speaker reading captions expects written Chinese, not a transcription of the sounds. Chinese output is Traditional Chinese for a Hong Kong reader, with Simplified available.
The 20-credit trial needs no credit card and never rolls into a paid plan on its own.
From a hotel ballroom to a chamber's own meeting room, the setup is the same. Only one thing meaningfully changes accuracy: how you take the sound.
Hotel ballrooms and function rooms almost always have a mixer. One line out of the desk into the laptop beats pointing a laptop microphone at the room, which picks up echo and the next table's conversation along with the speaker.
The people who arrive late missed the first one, and the Q&A is the part they most need to follow. Showing it twice costs nothing.
No deposits, no collection at the door, no headsets to sanitise, nothing to lose. Add one line to the invitation asking people to bring earbuds.
Zoom audio and floor audio are both just sound coming out of the host laptop. Set the source to “both” and the remote speaker and the speaker on stage are translated the same way.
It works in the room. tlive takes audio from the host computer's input, so a floor microphone, a feed from the sound desk, Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, YouTube Live and Facebook Live all use the same setup. For an in-person event, a feed from the venue's sound desk is the setup we recommend.
Yes, and Cantonese is the default source language. Mandarin and English are also available as the speaker's language.
Up to two translated languages per event, chosen from thirteen, and guests can also choose the speaker's own language as captions. So at most three caption streams run in the room at once.
Up to 250 guests per link on a paid account, and up to 10 on a free trial event.
Neither. Scanning the QR code opens it in the phone browser — nothing to install and no account to create.
Sometimes, and you should say so out loud. Anything carrying legal weight, a negotiation, or words that will be quoted verbatim still wants a human. Many organisers do both: an interpreter for the segment that matters most, tlive for the breakouts, the Q&A and the rest of the day.
Audio is never written to disk. The transcript belongs to the organiser, who can export it or delete it. The security page sets out what is kept and for how long.
A three-hour event with two translated languages is roughly thirty to forty-odd US dollars of credits, whatever the headcount. For comparison, the published venue rate in the table above is HK$8,200 a day for the interpretation system alone, before an interpreter is paid.
Every Hong Kong figure above is taken from the provider's own published rate card and was checked in September 2026. Interpreting is quoted per event; confirm current numbers with the supplier.
Continue with Google, create an event, share the QR code. That is the whole setup.