Cibus Tec and Labotec 2026: nine rooms at a trade fair, one control room
AI interpreting in voice and subtitles, Italian and English, in nine parallel rooms at Fiere di Parma: one control room at the RSI Hub in Milan, Feed-Through, and Assisted Listening in the open rooms at Labotec
Cibus Tec and Labotec 2026 were two trade fairs running at the same time at Fiere di Parma: Cibus Tec from 27 to 30 October, Labotec on 27 and 28 October 2026. Converso® provided AI interpreting in voice and subtitles, Italian and English, in nine rooms running in parallel — six for Cibus Tec and three for Labotec — with the translation control room at the RSI Hub in Milan and listening on the Converso® WebApp on the audience's own smartphones, with Feed-Through and Assisted Listening.
The Challenge
Fiere di Parma hosted two trade fairs on the same exhibition grounds, on the same days, each with a full conference programme. On the days the two fairs overlapped, nine rooms needed translation at the same time, each with its own control room and its own AV crew.
The three Labotec rooms were open rooms, without walls, in the same hall: three conferences side by side, with the noise of the fair all around and up to about eleven hours of programme a day.
The conference programme settled close to the event, with sessions added and times moved.
The Solution
One control room, in Milan
From each room we needed one thing only: the floor, the original signal from the stage. Each control room sent it to us with the solution that fitted what it already had. At the RSI Hub in Milan the floor became voice and subtitles in the other language, and the outputs went back to the audience.
No control room had to install one computer per language. The technical tests for all the rooms took place the day before the opening.
The audience listens on their own phones
The audience scanned a QR code and opened the WebApp on their own smartphones, with their own earphones, with nothing to download. On the same page they chose their language once, then listened to the translated voice and read the subtitles.
With Feed-Through there was no need to switch channels. When the speaker spoke the listener's language, the earphones carried the original audio and the subtitles became the transcription of what was said. When the speaker moved to the other language, the translation came in.
Assisted Listening: three open rooms, three separate audiences
In the open rooms at Labotec the difficulty was not the language, it was the noise. Three conferences a few metres from each other, without walls, in the hum of a busy exhibition hall.
Assisted Listening brings the original audio of the room, clean, to the earphones of the people seated there, from the same phone and the same WebApp. People who do not need the translation use it too: they sit down and put on their earphones. Each audience hears its own room and nothing else.
It is also an accessibility tool. Anyone in the room who has trouble hearing, because of the acoustics or their own hearing, sets their own volume in their own earphones, whatever the language.
The engine prepared on the programme
Before the fair we prepared the engine on the event vocabulary with Context Training: names of speakers, companies, technologies and acronyms from the conference programme. The written speeches were not needed: the published programme was already a good starting point.
Human supervision from start to finish
On every day of the event one of our linguists followed the outputs and a technician was on duty at the Hub. From the Hub all nine rooms were visible at once. A problem in one room was seen and solved from Milan, without sending someone to look for it across the halls.
The Results
- Nine rooms translated in parallel and supervised from a single point.
- The control rooms and AV crews of each room were asked only for the floor, with the solution they already had.
- In the open rooms at Labotec each audience heard its own room, without walls and without raising the volume of the loudspeakers.
- The audience used their own smartphones: no receivers to hand out and collect for the translation.
The same approach works for B2B trade fairs with a conference area, congresses with many parallel rooms, open-plan exhibition spaces, events with rooms without walls, events where accessibility for people who have trouble hearing is a requirement.
Technologies Used
Expert Tip
If you are setting up open rooms in an exhibition hall, try removing the loudspeakers before you add walls or raise the volume. With Assisted Listening each room has its own audio in the earphones, and rooms can sit side by side without one covering the other. The same phone, on the same page, also brings the translation to those who need it.
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