The multilingual communication landscape is shifting quickly. Cisco’s recent intent to acquire EzDubs, a startup known for speech-to-speech translation that preserves tone and voice characteristics, is the latest signal that major platforms are accelerating their push into AI-driven language services. If the acquisition is finalised, Webex will eventually benefit from more natural, voice-preserving translation technology.
This is an important development for the industry — but it doesn’t change what event organisers need today: reliable, accurate, flexible multilingual solutions that work across formats, platforms, and geographies.
So how should event leaders think about the strengths and limitations of Webex’s native multilingual features compared with what becomes possible when Webex is used alongside a professional, enterprise-oriented multilingual platform such as Interprefy?
Here’s a clear look at what each approach offers — and the scenarios where one outperforms the other.
What Webex Offers Today
Webex has continued to improve its multilingual accessibility features, offering valuable tools for everyday collaboration.
1. AI Speech Translation and Captions
Webex Meetings and Webinars support real-time speech-to-text captions where the host selects one of up to 15 spoken languages. Those captions can then be translated into more than 100 written caption languages.
2. Built-in Simultaneous Interpretation Channels
Webex's built-in simultaneous interpretation channels support up to 10 language channels per meeting or webinar.
3. Automated subtitle translation for livestreamed Webex Events
For livestreamed Webex Events, automatically generated captions can be machine translated into over 30 subtitle languages, offering lightweight multilingual support for simple virtual sessions.
These capabilities provide a meaningful baseline — especially for single-track online events, internal meetings, and accessible webinars.
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Where Webex Alone Reaches Its Limits
As soon as event requirements expand beyond straightforward captioning or a few interpreted languages, the limitations of platform-native multilingual features become clear. While Webex is designed for collaboration, full capacity multilingual event delivery demands far more infrastructure, precision and operational support than the platform is built to provide.
Spoken-language interpretation capacity is restricted to the platform
Although Webex includes interpretation channels to support multilingual participation, these features are designed mainly for scenarios where a small number of languages can be configured and managed directly within the meeting or webinar interface. As events on Webex grow in complexity — for example, involving multiple interpreted languages, rotating interpreters, panel formats, or extended agendas — the built-in interpretation tools naturally reflect the practical scope of a collaboration platform rather than the full operational workflows that more advanced multilingual setups can require. As a result, coordinating the entire interpreting process for larger or more dynamic Webex events can become challenging for organisers working solely within the native feature set.
No operational multilingual support layer
While Webex provides useful multilingual features, delivering polished multilingual communication often requires more than technical functionality alone. Event organisers typically need support with tasks such as coordinating interpreter teams, preparing terminology, running rehearsals, monitoring multilingual audio throughout live delivery, and managing recordings or post-event assets. These operational elements sit outside Webex’s native capabilities, and even for events using AI-driven audio translation, there is still value in having a structured process to ensure accuracy, consistency and scalability without adding complexity for organisers. As events on Webex grow in size or linguistic diversity, managing these workflows independently can become challenging.
Webex’s multilingual features only operate inside Webex
Webex’s multilingual tools are designed specifically for use within the Webex environment, which means features such as real-time captions, translated captions and interpreter audio channels function only when an event is hosted on Webex. If an organisation also runs meetings or events on other platforms — such as MS Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet — the multilingual setup used in Webex cannot be applied or replicated there. Each platform has its own separate language capabilities, which can vary significantly. As a result, organisations running programmes or communicating with clients across different platforms may find it challenging to maintain a consistent multilingual experience throughout the year, simply because Webex’s language features are not transferable outside the Webex meeting or webinar interface.
Webex is not built as a professional virtual interpreting booth
One of the most overlooked limitations is that Webex’s interpreter mode is designed as a convenience feature rather than a full professional interpreting environment. Conference interpreters depend on conditions such as dedicated audio channels isolated from audience noise, smooth relay and handover between interpreters, consistently low latency, full-duplex audio for natural collaboration, private interpreter chat for coordination, access to speaker video, slides and cues, and regular rotation supported by dedicated technical supervision. These are the foundational elements of a professional interpreting booth — and they are not part of Webex’s design.
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What Becomes Possible with Webex + Interprefy
Pairing Webex with Interprefy elevates the platform from a collaboration tool with multilingual add-ons into a fully event-ready ecosystem capable of supporting interpreting teams, complex workflows, and global audiences with confidence.
1. Event-grade accuracy through professional interpreters and responsible AI
When Webex is used together with Interprefy, event organisers gain access to a professional interpreting infrastructure supported end to end. Interprefy enables organisers to choose the most suitable multilingual approach for each session — either human interpretation via integration with the Interprefy platform, or AI speech translation and live captions via integration with the Interprefy Agent. This decision is made together with an Interprefy specialist and is based on the risk, complexity and content of the event.
For high-stakes sessions — such as regulatory briefings, investor updates, medical, scientific, cybersecurity or policy-driven presentations — Interprefy connects Webex with trained conference interpreters capable of delivering highly accurate, nuance-rich interpretation in real time. This ensures terminology is handled correctly and that misinterpretations do not undermine the event. Interprefy additionally supports sign-language interpretation, delivered by trained professionals, ensuring accessibility for Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants.
For sessions where full interpreter teams are not required, Interprefy also offers AI speech translation and live captions, which converts spoken audio into translated audio or text in seconds. This is suitable for lower-risk sessions, high-volume multilingual content, and scalable event formats.
2. Support for more than 6,000 language combinations
While Webex offers caption translation into more than 100 written languages, Interprefy dramatically expands event possibilities by supporting both, AI-powered audio translation and captions in over 6,000 language pairs, encompassing a wide range of spoken languages. It can also source professional human interpreters in any language with no limitations. This enables organisations to design events that genuinely reflect their language needs — whether they require rare languages, regional variants, or global coverage at scale — rather than being restricted to the subset of languages supported by a single platform. From minority languages to specialist sign languages, Interprefy provides coverage that aligns with real-world audience diversity.
3. Cross-platform multilingual continuity with Interprefy Agent
Interprefy Agent enables organisers to maintain consistent multilingual across major platforms. With Interprefy Agent, the same agent email can be used not only in Webex, but also across MS Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet. This means organisations are no longer restricted by the limitations of a single platform. Instead, they can plan event calendars confidently, knowing that multilingual accessibility will remain uniform no matter the platform their audience prefers.
4. Enterprise-grade security and regulatory compliance
When Webex is enhanced with Interprefy, organisations benefit from a multilingual solution built on robust security and data-protection practices. Interprefy’s infrastructure and processes are ISO 27001 certified and fully GDPR compliant, ensuring that multilingual audio streams, event content and participant data are handled responsibly and protected throughout the entire workflow. Secure routing of interpreting audio, controlled access for interpreters and technicians, encryption, privacy-by-design principles and strict retention policies all help ensure that sensitive information remains safeguarded. By combining Webex’s collaboration environment with Interprefy’s rigorous security framework, organisations gain a reliable, compliant and trustworthy multilingual setup suitable for any event where privacy, governance and data protection are essential.
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5. A complete operational layer for multilingual event delivery
Webex provides the platform — Interprefy provides the specialist multilingual delivery engine that inclusive events require. This operational layer covers far more than simply connecting platforms. Interprefy sources and manages interpreter teams when human accuracy is essential, prepares terminology and briefing materials, conducts rehearsals and audio checks, and monitors interpreting channels in real time to maintain stable quality throughout the event. For sessions where AI is the appropriate choice, Interprefy also provides AI audio translation and AI-generated captions, delivered through Interprefy Agent. These AI workflows can be enhanced with custom vocabulary, allowing organisations to pre-train the system with event-specific terminology, names, acronyms and brand language to improve accuracy. This gives organisers a flexible and scalable option for lower-risk or high-volume multilingual content. Interprefy adds further resilience through redundancy measures, backup configurations and the ability to produce multilingual recordings, captions and raw or edited post-event assets. Together, these capabilities remove a significant operational burden from event organisers and dramatically reduce the risk of technical issues impacting the multilingual experience.
Conclusion
AI-driven audio translation inside platforms like Webex is evolving fast — and Cisco’s intent to acquire EzDubs reinforces this trajectory. But even as AI becomes more natural and expressive, platform-native tools will continue to serve broad collaboration needs, not the specialised demands of multilingual event production.
For organisations running anything from small team meetings to global, multi-platform event programmes, Webex combined with Interprefy offers a reliable, flexible and more accurate approach to multilingual delivery — today and in the future.
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