Case Study: Swiss Economic Forum achieves seamless multilingual exchange during COVID-19 with Lionbridge simultaneous interpretation

How Lionbridge's simultaneous interpretation services helped the Swiss Economic Forum enable its multilingual conference attendees to exchange ideas during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Swiss Economic Forum faced the challenge of delivering high-quality simultaneous interpretation for 50 national and international speakers and some 900 multilingual attendees during the COVID-19 pandemic. With highly technical finance and business content and new safety restrictions, the customer turned to long‑time partner Lionbridge to provide simultaneous interpretation services that could secure specialist Swiss interpreters and adapt logistics to pandemic constraints.

Lionbridge implemented a three-pronged solution—detailed planning, a multidisciplinary team (including 2 project managers, an account executive, a language quality manager and 4 expert interpreters) and tight communication—to deliver 15 hours of simultaneous interpretation across two language pairs (German→English and German→French). By requiring advance presentation materials, modifying booths and enforcing safety protocols, Lionbridge enabled seamless information exchange during presentations and breakout sessions, serving ~900 participants and maintaining continuity after a decade of partnership while successfully overcoming COVID‑19 challenges.

Swiss Economic Forum

Michael Hebeisen

Teamleader Operations