"How much does live translation cost?" is usually the first question a city manager asks, and the honest answer is that it depends on a few specific things. This article explains what drives the price of translation services for government meetings so you can compare quotes and build a realistic budget.
We won't quote dollar figures here. Pricing varies by vendor, contract and service type, and any number in a blog post would be out of date or misleading for your situation.
The main types of service, and how each is priced
Agencies usually combine several kinds of language service. Each has its own cost structure.
Written translation
Translating agendas, notices and documents. Costs usually track the amount of text and the number of languages. Under SB 707, eligible legislative bodies must translate agendas (not the full packet) into up to three "applicable languages," and digital translation tools are allowed, which affects how agencies approach this cost. See the SB 707 agenda translation checklist.
Human interpretation
A spoken interpreter, in person or remote, simultaneous or consecutive. Costs usually track the interpreter's time, often with minimums, travel and scheduling lead time, and multiply with each language.
Human captioning (CART)
A human stenographer captioning live. Usually priced by time, often with minimums. If a deaf resident requests CART as an accommodation, the agency should consider it under the ADA's effective communication rules, whatever the cost comparison. See machine captions vs. CART.
Automatic live captions and translated captions
Machine captions with machine translation into other languages, shown as text. This is what SentraCaptions provides. It is text only; it does not provide spoken interpretation or an AI voice.
What drives the price of live translated captions
For automatic captions and translation, these are the factors to look at in any quote:
- Hours of meetings. Count every body you plan to caption: council or board, planning commission, committees. Multiply by typical meeting length and frequency.
- Number of languages. More languages per meeting usually means more cost. Choose based on your community, not on the longest list.
- Per-viewer fees. Some services charge by audience. That can make a busy meeting on a controversial item cost more than a quiet one.
- Hardware. Does the service need new equipment in the chamber, or does it work with your existing encoder?
- Paused time. Are you billed during recess and closed session?
- Commitment. Annual contract, prepaid blocks, or pay as you go.
- Staff time. Setup and operation take clerk and IT time. A service that starts and pauses with your meeting software saves some of it.
How SentraCaptions pricing works
We keep pricing simple and extremely competitive:
- Buy minutes as you need them, or prepay.
- No per-viewer fees. A packed hearing costs the same as an empty room.
- No hardware. SentraCaptions is one more destination on the encoder you already stream with (Pearl, OBS, vMix and others), over RTMP or SRT.
- Paused time isn't used. While paused for recess or closed session, nothing is captioned, translated, stored or billed.
Quotes are based on your hours of meetings and number of languages. Each meeting can have up to 8 languages, drawn from English plus translation into 74 languages and regional variants. The pricing page explains how to request a quote.
For agencies on CivicCA, CivicCA starts captioning when the meeting starts and pauses it for recess and closed session, which helps keep billed time to the open meeting.
How to estimate your own needs
Before you ask any vendor for a quote, gather:
- A list of every body you want to caption, with how often it meets and typical length.
- The languages you need, based on American Community Survey data, staff requests and community partners. See choosing translation languages.
- Whether you need languages that may not be supported. Hmong and Khmer, for example, are not available in SentraCaptions, so you may need a separate plan for them.
- Your current streaming setup: encoder, YouTube Live or other platform, and any meeting management software.
- Whether meetings ever run at the same time in different rooms.
Send the same information to every vendor so quotes are comparable.
Comparing quotes fairly
Line up quotes on the same basis. Ask each vendor:
- What does a typical month cost for our hours and languages?
- Are there per-viewer, per-language, setup or hardware charges?
- Is paused time billed?
- What happens to unused minutes?
- Are transcripts and subtitle files included?
Also weigh what the price buys: how quickly captions appear, glossary support for local names, clear labels that captions are automatic, and transcripts in every language. Our list of questions to ask a live captioning vendor helps here, and budgeting for live captions covers fitting the cost into your budget cycle.
Next steps
- Pricing
- Features and the language list
- SentraCaptions with CivicCA
- Contact us for a quote based on your meetings