9/04/2026
By Claudine Adeyemi-Adams FIEP, Founder and CEO, Earlybird
Every caseworker who has spent time in a linguistically diverse area knows this scenario well. A participant arrives for their appointment and does not yet speak fluent English. The adviser is ready to help, but the conversation cannot happen properly. At that point the adviser is usually left choosing between three options, none of which work well in practice.
The first is to book a professional interpreter or translation service. That carries a real cost, often charged by the hour or by the session, and typically requires around 48 hours of notice. It works for planned appointments, but it does not work for drop-in sessions or anything unscheduled, and across a busy caseload the bill adds up quickly.
The second is to reschedule the appointment entirely and bring the participant back in once a translator can be arranged. That delays the support the person came in for, pushes back assessments, and often results in missed follow-ups.
The third is to press on using a phone translation app, or to rely on a family member who has come along with the participant. Both options raise real data protection concerns, neither is auditable, and sensitive conversations about health, housing or employment history simply should not be routed through a family member or a consumer app.
This is the gap Interpreter is built to close.
Interpreter is a real-time, two-way translation tool built into the Earlybird platform. It supports more than 90 languages and dialects, and it lets advisers and participants speak to each other in their own languages during the appointment itself, with no booking and no waiting.
The flow is simple. The adviser selects the participant’s language on screen. Two buttons then appear, one for each language. The adviser holds their button, speaks in English, and releases it. Interpreter translates what has been said and plays it aloud in the participant’s language. When the participant responds, they hold their own button, speak, and the adviser hears the translation in English. Both parties can also see the text version of what has been said on screen, so nothing is missed and accuracy can be checked in the moment.
For advisers, this removes the most common practical barrier to serving multilingual participants. First appointments happen on time, drop-in sessions become genuinely accessible, and the quality of the conversation improves because the person can describe their situation in the words they reach for naturally.
For providers and programme managers, the sums change as well. There are no per-session interpreter fees to absorb, because Interpreter is included as part of the existing Earlybird subscription. Booking administration disappears, and compliance improves because conversations captured through the platform are documented and auditable in a secure environment.
For participants, the experience is more dignified. They can speak in the language they are most comfortable with. They do not need to bring a family member into a sensitive appointment, and they do not need to repeat themselves through a consumer translation app. They can share information about their health, their housing or their employment history with confidence that it is being accurately communicated.
Earlybird Interpreter is live now and available to all Earlybird users, with support for more than 90 languages and dialects. You can see how it works on the Interpreter page.