This tutorial will walk you through the process of creating your first multilingual conference call. The process is very similar to creating a traditional (i.e. non-multilingual) conference call as described in our online Users Guide. This tutorial covers the few additional considerations involved in creating a multilingual conference.

The following steps should be taken in order:

1 - Log into www.zipdx.com

All of the conferencing and administrative functions are handled by logging into www.ZipDX.com using your email address and PIN.

When you log in, you will be on the HOME tab. Here you will see in-progress meetings and pending meetings (scheduled for the future), if any.

You will also see your conference “templates”. Conference templates allow you to save various meeting parameters for easy reuse in the future. Every organizer using ZipDX starts out with one template called “Meeting.” This is used for “simple” meetings – a regular conference call with no interpretation.

For the purposes of scheduling your first multilingual conference call you will use the basic “Meeting” template. In the process of working through this tutorial you will add the details necessary to create a multilingual conference.

Note: For the purposes of this exercise let us stipulate that this call will involve English and Spanish.

2 - Create a conference using the basic conference template

Creating A Conference

Begin by clicking on the Create A Conference link shown beside the meeting template. A page with be offered where you can define the basic parameters of the conference.

Set the date & time of the meeting

Replace the default “Topic” with a descriptive title for your meeting

Note: We don’t charge organizers for conferences that are demonstrations of the system or training in it’s use. When creating such a conferences select the “….Training” account in the pull-down menu. If you don’t see one with training in the name contact support@zipdx.com.

3 - Add Attendees

Add Attendees

Invite people to the conference, using their email address, one at a time. Remember to add the interpreter(s) as well as the hosts and attendees.

If an attendee is not already in the database, you will see an indication reporting “Not Listed” and a link that says “Pre-Register”. Click on Preregister.

4 - Pre-Registration

Participant Pre-Registration

On the pre-registration pop-up screen, enter the person’s first and last name, set their proper time zone, and enter their company name.

Enter the person’s telephone number, INCLUDING “+” and the COUNTRY CODE. If you would dial 011-52-13344556677 to dial from your regular phone, then enter +5213344556677.

If the person is a Spanish-speaker, select Spanish as their preferred language.

Click SUBMIT preregister the participant.

If after preregistering a participant you want to add additional numbers, for a person, click “Update” once you have completed the initial pre-registration step; the new form will let you add another number.

5 - Multilingual Settings

Enable Multilingual Capability

The configuration of the multilingual settings are at the bottom of the Audio Features section of the page. The default multilingual setting is Not Enabled.

To enable the multilingual capability select “Over the phone” as the conference type. This will cause various other settings to be displayed.

Talkthru & Feedback Settings

“Talk-through” allows the current speaker to be heard mixed under the interpreters voice. This provides assurance that the interpreter is in fact following the speaker.

“Feedback” is some of the interpreters delivery mixed into the room with the current speaker. This gives the current speaker confidence that the interpreter is following them well. In the case of a formal presentation it can  also give them a sense of timing, allowing them to adjust the pace of their presentation in order to accommodate the interpretation.

Both Talkthru and Feedback are adjustable in five steps from “Off” to “Loud.” The default is “Soft” which should be satisfactory for most situations.

Language Settings

Next, select the number of languages (2-8) involved in the conference. Then enter the list of languages. Languages are specified using ISO standard two-letter language codes.

For example, the following images shows how to create a conference in three languages; English, French & Spanish.

Additional Examples

Let’s consider a conference involving four languages. In addition to adding the additional interpreters to the listed participants, the multilingual settings would be as follows:

This stipulates four languages in use; English (EN), German  (DE), French (FR) and Russian (RU). Similarly, the following example…

…defines a conference with two languages in use; French (FR) and Japanese (JA).

About Language Codes

ZipDX uses ISO 639-1 standard two-letter language codes. While there are dozens of such codes possible, the current ZipDX multilingual implementation supports the following languages.

en – English, zh – Chinese , de – German,  it – Italian, ja – Japanese, ko – Korean

pl – Polish, pt – Portuguese, es – Spanish, fr – French, ru – Russian, ar  – Arabic

Each of these are valid when setting up a ZipDX multilingual conference call.

6 - Assign Roles

Assign Roles

With the multilingual settings now established, the final step is to assign roles. As the conference organizer you are a Host by default, but there can be more than one person with host authority in the meeting. All others are assigned to the default role of Participant.

The interpreter MUST be assigned to the role of Interpreter.

If other people on your team will be serving as chairman or moderator, mark them as Host so that they can also access the on-line dashboard during the meeting.

7 - Actually Creating The Meeting

Actually Creating The Meeting

Click SAVE and your meeting will be set up; all the participants will receive email notification. As the ORGANIZER, by default you will NOT receive an email.

There is a link on summary page to send yourself an invitation. That message includes a calendar attachment so you can add the conference to your own calendar.

See this process in action!

We’ve also created a brief how-to video that shows how to create a multilingual conference template, then use that template to schedule a board meeting.