What to Look For When Hiring a Sign Language Interpreting Agency
Most people don’t know what a good interpreting agency looks like until they’ve dealt with a bad one. By then they’re usually mid-production, mid-event, or mid-crisis — and the damage is already done.
If you’re evaluating agencies for the first time, or you’ve had an experience that made you start over, here’s what actually separates the good ones from the rest.
Who Answers the Phone
The first thing to pay attention to has nothing to do with interpreters. It has to do with the inbox.
If you send an inquiry and the response comes from a generic address — info@, scheduling@, requests@ — with no name attached, that’s your first signal. You’re not talking to a person. You’re talking to a queue. And when you need something urgently, when a document gets missed, when something changes the day before your event, a queue is not going to save you.
Every Flamingo client has a named account manager. One person whose entire job is to know them — their preferences, their history, their team, their events. Not a rotation of whoever happens to be covering the inbox that day. Not a producer who is also juggling fifteen other things. One person who picks up when you call and already knows what you’re going to say before you say it.
And when we say picks up — we mean it literally. Every account manager, every senior staff member, and the owner of this company includes a personal cell phone number in every piece of communication we send. When you dial a number at Flamingo, you know exactly who you’re calling and exactly who is going to answer. There is no hold music. There is no ticket system. There is no “someone will get back to you within two business days.”
The reason this matters practically is that the telephone game is real. When multiple people are working from a shared inbox, prep documents get missed. Information gets uploaded twice or not at all. The interpreter who shows up to your event has a name and a call sheet but no context — and you can always tell. They’re the one roaming the venue asking anyone they can find who they’re supposed to check in with.
Our interpreters walk in knowing exactly who they’re looking for. We research our clients. We brief our interpreters. If a photo isn’t available, they have a physical description. They arrive confident and ready because we’ve done the work before they got there.
What You Should Know About Your Interpreter Before They Arrive
Here’s a question worth asking any agency you’re considering: will I know anything about the interpreter before they show up?
In our experience, when clients who’ve left other agencies answer that question, the answer is almost always no. They knew a name. Sometimes not even that.
Every Flamingo client hears something like this before their event: “You’ll be working with Richard and Kate. Richard is just coming off a three-month production run of Love Is Blind. Kate will be wrapping the GLAAD Awards the week before she meets your team.” That’s not a nice touch. That’s how you build trust. Your Deaf talent and your production team are about to spend hours with these people. They deserve to know who they are.
More than that — we put clients in direct contact with their interpreters before the event. Not through us, not cc’d on an email chain. Direct. If something comes up the morning of, if there’s a last-minute change, if a client just wants to connect ahead of time, they can reach their interpreter directly. We think that’s how it should work. Nobody should feel out of the loop about who is representing them in the room.
Our interpreters aren’t random practitioners pulled from a list. They’re working industry professionals who move from production to production, building real resumes, developing real specializations. When we tell you someone is right for your event, we can tell you exactly why — because we know their work firsthand.
The Things That Should Never Happen
Every agency has war stories. Here are some of ours — except they’re not ours. They’re stories clients brought to us after leaving someone else.
Interpreters who didn’t show up. Not once — repeatedly, at different agencies, to different clients. No call, no replacement, no explanation. Just an empty spot where an interpreter was supposed to be.
Double bookings. Two interpreters confirmed for the same event, both believing they were the only one, neither showing up because they each assumed the other had it covered.
Interpreters who worked closely with a colleague who tested positive for Covid days before an event — at an agency that knew better and did nothing. Any agency worth working with understood during that period that you didn’t team people up for exactly that reason. Some didn’t care enough to manage it.
Agencies that quoted rates they knew they couldn’t honor, confirmed availability they didn’t have, and let clients find out the hard way. We’ve been called in to clean up more of those situations than we can count.
Insurance, Releases, and the Stuff Nobody Talks About Until It’s a Problem
Events have insurance requirements. Some of them are significant. A reputable agency carries appropriate coverage and will obtain a new Certificate of Insurance for events that require more than their standard policy. Some agencies won’t. They’ll tell you what they carry, tell you it should be enough, and leave you to figure out the gap.
The same applies to image releases and recording releases. If your interpreter is going to appear on camera — and on a produced event they almost certainly will — you need documentation. Agencies that don’t have this process dialed in create legal exposure for their clients.
If the right interpreter for your event isn’t local, we find them. We have relationships with practitioners across the country and around the world. Distance has never been a reason we’ve turned down a job or compromised on who we send. The right person shows up. That’s the commitment.
What Your Interpreter Shows Up Wearing
Wardrobe is something most agencies have genuinely never thought about. We think about it for every single event.
When you’ve spent time working with stylists from New York Fashion Week to the Oscars red carpet, you develop a sense for what a room requires and how to dress for it. We manage wardrobe in house. Whatever the event asks for — black tie, business formal, branded looks, camera-ready — we handle it. Our interpreters don’t show up guessing. They show up right.
Content Preparation
An interpreter who doesn’t understand the content they’re interpreting is not giving your Deaf attendees equal access to the event. They’re giving them a best effort. Those are not the same thing.
If your event involves a product launch, your interpreter should know the product. If it involves technical content — a medical conference, a legal proceeding, a developer keynote — your interpreter should have spent real time with the material before they walk in. If there’s terminology specific to your industry, they should know it. If there’s a new device being announced, a new piece of software being demonstrated, a speaker with a particular style or cadence, your interpreter should be prepared for all of it.
We make that happen or we find someone else. Those are the only two options. “They’ll figure it out on the day” is not a preparation strategy. It’s a liability.
The Short Version
A good interpreting agency knows who you are before you have to remind them. They can tell you exactly who your interpreter is and why they’re right for the job. They show up — always, on time, prepared, appropriately dressed, and ready to work. They have their paperwork in order. They don’t disappear when something goes wrong. And when you call, a real person answers.
That’s not a high bar. It just looks like one because so many agencies clear it so rarely.
It’s also worth knowing what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires when it comes to effective communication access — understanding your obligations as an organization is always a good starting point.
That’s what you should be looking for. The good news is, you found it.
