Our own team and equipment
Portable simultaneous (Infoport)
Our own equipment, up to 30 listeners, for plant visits, audits, training days and meetings that move through a space.
- Capacity
- Up to 30 listeners
- Pairs
- English → Portuguese · Portuguese → English
What the portable system is
A wireless transmitter in the interpreter’s hand, and a receiver with an earpiece for every listener. The interpreter speaks quietly, in the same room as the group, and everyone who needs interpretation hears it through the earpiece. There is no booth, no sound desk and no rigging: the kit fits in a case and travels with the group.
It goes by several names — Infoport, portable system, tour-guide system. They are all the same category of equipment.
What it is right for
- Plant visits and factory floors
- Technical audits and inspections
- Training days
- Board meetings and negotiations
- Groups moving between rooms or areas
- Site visits on construction, port or field locations
What these have in common: the group is small, it moves, and ambient noise makes it impractical for everyone to hear an interpreter speaking aloud.
What it is not right for
Worth stating plainly, because it is the source of most disappointment with this equipment:
- Auditorium with a stage and PA. The interpreter would have to speak at a volume audible over the room’s own sound. That case calls for a booth.
- Large plenary. Above 30 listeners our own kit does not cover it, and the format usually calls for a booth anyway.
- Any event with more than 30 people listening to interpretation. Thirty is how many receivers we own. Above that we hire in, and it appears in the quote explicitly.
The part nobody mentions in advance
The interpreter is in the room and is audible. Quietly, but audibly. For ten people on a technical visit this is irrelevant — plant noise covers it. For twenty-five people seated in a quiet room, a continuous voice in the background bothers some of the participants.
This is not a fault in the equipment, it is the nature of it. If your format is a quiet room with a lot of people in it, the honest answer is a booth, and we say so in the quote rather than letting you find out on the day.
Stated capacity
Thirty receivers, which is what we have. A pair of interpreters, which is the standard for any working day longer than an hour. The equipment is ours, the transport is ours, and the people operating it are the people interpreting — there is no third-party technician in between.