How Real-Time Translation Can Fight Borderless Crime

Why Real-Time Translation is Essential to Fight Borderless Crime

When it comes to modern investigations, a single testimony can alter an entire case—but what happens when it’s in a language you cannot understand?

Although borderless crime has been a prevalent issue for some time, the digitally connected world we live in makes this even more challenging for law enforcement and justice to protect. With the advent of generative AI we’re seeing levels of cybercrime, fraud and other criminal activities grow to levels we’ve not seen before. Cybersecurity Ventures expects global cybercrime costs to grow by 15 percent per year, costing $10.5 trillion USD in 2025.

To add to the growing problem of borderless crimes, the challenge of language barriers can significantly slow investigations, ultimately impacting the outcome of cases and trials. It is vital to collect evidence, but if it requires statements from a person that speaks another language, this can take time and resources away from the investigation in order to translate.

This is where real-time translation comes in. A powerful tool that provides live captions of speakers conversing in one language, whilst translating the text into another language for other participants of the interview.

In this article we will explore the innovative technology that is real-time translation, how it can support cross-border investigations and understanding how it compares to human interpreters.

The New Reality of Borderless Crime

Borderless crime covers a wide spectrum of crimes, including organised crime, cyberattacks and terrorism. Organised Crime Groups (OCGs) commit a range of serious offences from drug smuggling to human trafficking. These groups can easily span countries and even continents, making it extremely difficult for law enforcement to track and prosecute members of OCGs. And when law enforcement do charge OCG criminals or take statements from victims and witnesses, a language barrier could potentially exist.

As discussed earlier, language barriers further complicates investigations, as evidence can be multilingual. This would require interpreters to translate interviews, messages and documents, which can hinder the progress of investigations.

Real-Time Translation vs. Human Interpreters

So when it comes to taking statements in an interview scenario, can real-time translation be used in place of human interpreters?

Speed and Efficiency

Real-time translation technology provides near-instant output, which is vitally important during time-sensitive and urgent interviews. On the other hand, human interpreters require scheduling for the interview, and are limited based on their availability. Another neglected factor is the forgetting curve that interviewees experience, especially if they are not able to communicate their statement shortly after the crime. The later a statement is taken, the more likely the interviewee is to forget details of the incident.

Scalability

Real-time translation can process large volumes of data, and some variants can process multiple languages at once, meaning that interviews can be conducted in several languages. Interpreters of a multilingual video interview would struggle, especially if there is more than two languages being spoken, requiring potentially more than one interpreter.

Quality and Context

One often overlooked aspect of translation is the quality of the interpreter’s response to the interviewer, as well as how the presence of an interpreter alters the context of the interview. If you’ve ever spoken with someone through an interpreter, you may have noticed the impact of having a third person relay the conversation and how it affects its flow.

More importantly, what if critical details are missed by the interpreter—or worse, not communicated back to the interviewer at all? Real-time translation eliminates these disruptions, maintaining the natural flow of interviews and ensuring that responses remain accurate, even in multilingual conversations.

Accuracy

Whilst real-time translation is a powerful technology, the accuracy of translated conversations is yet to be 100% accurate. Advances in AI will continue to improve the percentage accuracy of this tech. In certain scenarios, a human interpreter may need to oversee the translating, especially in nuanced or highly sensitive interviews.

Operational Benefits of Real-Time Translation in Investigations

Due to the overwhelming amount of evidence required in cases, including witness, victim and suspect statements, there are many operational benefits of real-time translation.

Accelerating Evidence Analysis

By removing language barriers using real-time translation, the process of gathering and analysing evidence is reduced. Cross-border cooperation is increased, leading to faster resolutions of cases.

Supporting Multilingual Interviews

Real-time translation allows for interviews to be conducted between participants that speak different languages with near-instant live captions. This enables a positive and efficient conversation with victims and witnesses without relying and waiting on interpreters.

Evidential Integrity

Secure video interview platforms, such as MeaConnexus, maintain evidential integrity from the outset of the recording. This means that you will know if the contents of the interview recordings have been changed or altered. Therefore you will be made aware if translated material has been modified, including the recording of the interview and its transcript.

Cost Savings

The cost of real-time translation pales in comparison to the cost of booking an interpreter for the interview. The cost of hiring an interpreter may include travel, accommodation and subsistence expenses like food or parking charges.

Is Your Organisation Ready for Borderless Investigations?

Now more than ever before, we must ensure language barriers aren’t barriers and can be overcome with speed and efficiency. Instead of impeding investigations and evidence collection, real-time translation offers a next-gen solution for interviewers, supporting multilingual interviews.

If you currently have to contend with multilingual evidence and testimony, how quickly can your team translate and analyse the evidence? If you don’t, are you equipped to handle the demands of cross-border crime in real time?

We’d like to leave you with one last question for you to reflect on, could real-time translation improve the speed and accuracy of your investigations?