Menter Bro Dinefwr is part of Menter, a government-funded group promoting the Welsh language. The translation part of the organisation, Dewis, has four full-time translators providing live simultaneous translations for public meetings and conferences in Carmarthenshire. Dewis hands receivers to non-Welsh speakers at public meetings, ensuring that when someone asks or answers a question in Welsh, non-Welsh speakers can hear the translator translating the Welsh into English.
Sound Induction Systems provided Menter Bro Dinefwr seven sets of Sennheiser 2020D digital Tourguides. "They have seven boxes of headsets with transmitters," Philip Nicholes of Sound Induction Systems explains. "Each box can contain 20 headsets, but they're only putting 18 in each case. As soon as the new version of the Sennheiser headset to assist hearing-impaired people arrives, they'll be ordering 14 headsets to fill those spaces."
Trosol in Cardiff had different requirements. They already owned and used analogue Sennheiser Tourguide and infra-red systems, but wanted to expand their stock of translation equipment. They purchased a 30-way Tourguide system including a microphone, charger and 30 headsets and an infra-red system with 120 headsets that Sound Induction Systems modified to their particular demands, with a cluster of infra-red radiators on a stand with a Sennheiser radio microphone receiver on the back of it.
"We put a battery eliminator on it," explains Nicholes, "and we fit a circuit of our own, so we can power the battery eliminator from the same power supply that's feeding the infra-red cluster. You don't have to put batteries in the radio mic receiver. You don't have to switch it on independently. The whole thing is integrated."
(Jim Evans)
