Three Seconds in São Paulo

Kristin Smith, IMMERSE’s SVP of Sales, was on a video call with a client in São Paulo. They were using live translation technology, and everything they said was rendered accurately in real time.

Technically, the language barrier was gone.

But the meeting wasn’t working. The familiar rapport Kristin usually felt when talking to clients just wasn’t there.

Kristin had been learning Portuguese, and she made a decision. She turned off the live translation and started speaking Portuguese. She stumbled over the words a little as she tried to express her idea, but she got it out.

The client paused. Then he leaned closer to the camera, smiled, and gently corrected her.

Kristin says that in those three seconds, they built more trust than they would have in six months of meetings with live translation.

The technology had done what it was designed to do, but it didn’t help her build a connection with her client. What turned the conversation around was Kristin’s willingness to be vulnerable and speak for herself, even if she couldn’t do it perfectly.

That is the tension at the center of a much bigger question for global businesses:

As translation technology gets better, why do employees still need to learn another language?

When live translation isn’t enough

Translation technology can solve a real problem. When two people do not share a language, it can help them understand one another accurately enough to keep a conversation moving.

But something changes when technology is doing the speaking. There is a subtle difference between hearing someone speak to you in your own language and hearing a tool translate what they are saying.

In a conversation, we are constantly responding to one another’s tone, timing, and facial expressions. Translation can disrupt the alignment between those signals and the words they were originally paired with. What can get lost is not necessarily the meaning, but some of the human connection that comes from speaking directly to one another.

Speaking directly in a language can build better rapport and trust even when the translation itself is excellent.

That difference can matter in business relationships, where trust and rapport are part of how people get things done together.

The problem is not translation technology itself. It is treating translation as a substitute for the ability to communicate directly.

IMMERSE builds the language skills that instant translation can’t replace

IMMERSE uses technology differently: not to speak for people, but to build the language skills and confidence they need to speak for themselves with colleagues and clients.

Inside IMMERSE, employees can learn independently through educator-designed self-paced lessons, with AI providing speaking practice and feedback personalized to the needs of each employee. With IMMERSE Pro, they can also join live classes in shared immersive environments, where they communicate with real people in structured contexts. They listen, respond, adjust, and work to keep the exchange moving naturally as it develops.

IMMERSE can also extend that practice into employees’ actual working lives. With Capture, learners can prepare for an upcoming conversation, review it afterward, and turn it into personalized practice for the next one.

Through these experiences, employees build the skills to conduct business directly in another language, with the responsiveness and rapport that come from speaking to one another rather than through live translation.

Better translation does not make fluency obsolete

Translation technology will continue to get better, and that is a good thing. It can remove language barriers in situations where direct communication might otherwise be difficult or impossible.

But for global organizations, better translation does not eliminate the value of being able to speak for yourself. Language capability means more than just knowing the words someone said. It means participating directly in the exchange, tuning in to tone, timing, and reactions, and building a real human connection with the other person.

IMMERSE lets employees build the ability to work directly with colleagues and clients, building the relationships that make global business work.