Working through Lingfaro follows the same path every time: an offer arrives, you decide, you work the session, both parties attest, and payment follows. This article walks the full path from the interpreter’s side so you know what to expect before your first offer. For the dispatch mechanics behind the scenes, see how Lingfaro dispatch works.
What does an offer contain?
An offer is a request for a specific session. It tells you what you need to decide whether to take it:
- Language and, where relevant, the dialect.
- Modality: on-site, in-person interpreting.
- Date and time, including expected duration.
- Location for the assignment.
- Specialty: medical, legal, education, or social services.
- Rate for the session, shown before you accept.
The rate is on the offer, so you are not guessing or waiting for an invoice to learn what the session pays. If you want help thinking through your own pricing across modalities and specialties, see the interpreter rate card template.
One thing the offer does not contain is patient or case detail. A PHI scanner keeps protected health information out of dispatch briefs. You receive clinical or case context from the institution on arrival.
How does the offer window work?
Each offer comes with a window: a span of time during which it is yours to accept. Lingfaro dispatches in tiers. An offer first goes to interpreters who closely match the session, then widens to a broader pool if it is not accepted in time. Urgency can adjust the rate as the offer escalates.
From your side, the tiering is mostly invisible. You see the offers that reach you and the window on each one. If you accept within the window, the session is yours. If the window passes, the offer moves on. You do not need to track the tiers yourself; you decide on the offers you receive.
What does accepting mean?
Accepting is a positive action. You tap accept, and the session becomes a booking. Until you do, a sent offer is not a commitment from you and not a booking for the client. This is deliberate. It means a booking on Lingfaro reflects an interpreter who has actually said yes, rather than silence read as agreement.
Declining is just as clean. You can decline an offer or let it expire, and dispatch routes to other interpreters. There is no penalty and no informal scoring against you.
How should I get ready once I accept?
Once you accept, prepare. Confirm the time, the building and address for on-site work, and the on-site contact. Review terminology for the specialty. For VRI and OPI, check your connection, audio, and video ahead of time. Arriving prepared shortens the warm-up at the start of the session and reduces surprises.
We keep a full pre-session checklist that covers terminology prep, tech checks, on-site logistics, and role boundaries in detail.
What happens at the session?
For on-site work, arrive early, check in through the location’s front desk or your on-site contact, and go to where the encounter is happening. For VRI and OPI, connect at the scheduled time through the details on the offer.
The institution gives you the case context you need when you arrive. From there, you interpret. Your job is to convey meaning accurately and completely between the parties. Keep within the interpreter’s role: interpret what is said, ask for clarification when you need it, and leave clinical, legal, and case decisions to the professionals in the room. Confidentiality applies to everything you hear.
How is the session record produced?
At the end of the session, both you and the client attest that it happened: the interpreter and the client each confirm the session, its modality, and its timing. This is the two-party attestation step.
That attestation produces a signed, timestamped session record. The record captures your identity, the credentials you held active at the time, the modality, and the session timestamps. The record exports as JSON and PDF. It is the documented account of your work, useful to you and to the institution for its own files.
How and when do I get paid?
Payment runs through Stripe Connect. You complete Connect onboarding once, when you set up your account, which includes the bank details Stripe needs to pay you. After that, you do not re-do it for each session.
When a session is completed and attested by both parties, payment moves to you through Stripe Connect, usually within a few days. There is no monthly invoicing on your side and no chasing. On the client side, institutions pay the platform on monthly statements, with net-30 as the default; that billing arrangement is separate from when you get paid.
What about cancellations and no-shows?
Sometimes a session you accepted gets cancelled, or you find you cannot make it after all. Decide early. If something changes on your end, signal it as soon as you know, so dispatch can route the session to another interpreter while there is still time. Cancelling cleanly and early is part of being dependable.
No-shows are the case everyone wants to avoid: the client and the patient are present, and the interpreter is not. They are disruptive and, in most programs, traceable to gaps in confirmation and fallback. For the full picture of why no-shows happen and how the system is built to reduce them, see the interpreter no-shows playbook.
Where do I start?
If you are new to Lingfaro, the path is short: apply, get your credentials verified, complete Stripe Connect onboarding, and start receiving offers that match your profile. The interpreters page covers the setup and what to expect once your account is live.