PULTEVENT
Multilingual event games: 6 formats for a company that works in several languages
The ballroom of a conference hotel in Lisbon, day two of the European sales meeting. Two hundred and forty people from nineteen countries, a stage with a lectern nobody wants to stand behind, and a regional director from Milan telling me backstage that the Spanish team never joins in anything. Forty minutes later the Spanish team is on its feet at table fourteen, arguing with the Poles over the last question of the quiz. The director never mentions it again.
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Multinational companies have a working language, usually English, and a room full of people who each think best in another one. At a big internal event that shows. The people who are fluent speak up; the rest go quiet and wait for the dinner. Interactive games are one of the few things that reliably pull the quieter half in, but only if the screen in their hand makes sense to them.
PULTEVENT is run by a host or event manager from a laptop browser. The stage screen shows the game; attendees scan a QR code and play from their phones, with no app to download and no accounts to create. The guest interface on each phone picks up that phone's language setting automatically. The host console works in English. Every attendee's phone needs internet, so venue Wi-Fi capacity is part of the brief.
6 multilingual formats for a conference, kickoff or company party
1 Country-team quiz
Teams by country or region, questions about the company, the markets and the year. Each attendee answers on their phone, the team scoreboard tallies results live.
How to run it. Write questions in the working language and keep them plain: short sentences, no idioms, no puns that only work in English.
People from the smaller markets get to beat head office, which is good for everybody's mood.
2 Live polls during the keynote
Three or four questions scattered through a presentation: which market grew fastest, what should the team focus on next year. Bars grow on the big screen as the votes arrive.
How to run it. Give the speaker the exact slide numbers for each poll, and rehearse the switch between slides and poll once.
Attendees who would never raise a hand in a hall of two hundred will tap a phone.
3 Guess the colleague across borders
Colleagues who have only met by email are shown as a fun fact and a blurred photo. Phones guess the name.
How to run it. Choose people from as many countries as possible, and ask their permission first.
The name in the email signature becomes a face with a story attached, which carries on at the bar.
4 Timeline of the company
Events from the company's history appear on phones, and each attendee puts them in order: first office abroad, the merger, the product launch, the year the coffee machine was replaced.
How to run it. Mix serious milestones with one or two in-jokes from the local offices.
New joiners learn the story. Veterans enjoy being right.
5 Awards with a vote
Categories chosen by the organisers, nominees on screen, votes from every phone in the room, and then the awards ceremony with confetti and music.
How to run it. Include at least one team award from outside head office.
Recognition that comes from colleagues' votes feels different from a list read out by management.
6 Drift Arena at the evening party
Twelve cars on the screen, twelve phones steering. Country against country in heats, and a final.
How to run it. Put the national team names on screen and let the rest of the room cheer.
Nothing about racing a small car needs translation.
Interface in each attendee's language
Phones set to German show German buttons and prompts; phones set to Spanish show Spanish.
One console for the host
The organiser works in English from a single laptop, whatever the room speaks.
Content in the language you choose
You write questions, captions and awards; they appear exactly as you wrote them.
Scales to the ballroom
A full ballroom answers from its phones, and the results go straight to the stage screen.
How the language setting works for attendees
Nobody chooses a language in the app, because there is no app. When an attendee opens the game in their phone browser, the interface uses that phone's language, provided it is one of the languages the guest screens are translated into. For most European staff that means the familiar buttons and instructions they use every day.
If an organiser prefers everyone on the same screen text, for example because the event's theme is one shared language, the host can turn this behaviour off.
What still needs your attention
Only the interface is translated. The questions, poll options, award names and captions come from you, in whichever language you wrote them. For a room of nineteen nationalities, I usually write in plain English and keep every question under fifteen words. Where a phrase matters, like the name of an award, I add the local version beneath it.
The platform also has ready-made quiz decks, but they are mostly in Russian for now, so a European corporate event will almost always use its own content. That is better anyway: questions about your company beat generic trivia every time.
Venue checklist
Two things go wrong at multilingual conferences: Wi-Fi and projection. Ask the venue how many devices the guest network can handle at once and whether it has a captive portal page that might block the QR link. Put the network name on the screen before the first game. For the stage screen, a laptop with HDMI output is all you need, and the AV team will be relieved you did not ask for special software.
"Does it need an installation?"
"A browser. You have one."
Hybrid and remote colleagues
Share the stage window in the video call the remote offices are already watching. They join from their own phones through the same QR code and play alongside the ballroom. The scoreboard does not care where people are sitting.
A running order for a two-day meeting
Day one, morning: a short poll in the opening session, just to get phones out and the QR code scanned once. People who have joined once join faster the second time. After lunch, when energy drops, the guess-the-colleague round. Day one, evening: the country-team quiz between the main course and dessert, then Drift Arena while the bar opens.
Day two is for the company timeline and the awards, which belong at the close, when the leadership team is still in the room and people have had a night to form opinions. Leave the stage screen on a slow photo loop of both days while everyone collects their coats. I have seen more people photograph that loop than the keynote slides.
Pace for a mixed room
Give a little more time per question than you would with native speakers, especially for text-heavy rounds. Ten extra seconds costs nothing and keeps people from giving up. And read each question aloud from the stage once; hearing and reading at the same time helps people working in their second or third language.
For the procurement conversation
The free 3-day demo requires no card, so the event team can run a test with colleagues in several offices before anyone signs off. The full version is a one-time licence, not a subscription, which keeps it simple for finance. Pricing is on pultevent.ru/en.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, who has hosted weddings, birthdays and office parties since 2014: over 500 events, best host of Moscow 2024 and of Saint Petersburg 2023 at the TOP 100 Awards. He made it for his own nights first. The rest is at pultevent.ru/en.
How to run games at a multilingual corporate event
- 1
List the attendees' languages and decide whether phones should follow their own language.
- 2
Write the quiz, polls and award categories in plain working-language text.
- 3
Check the venue Wi-Fi capacity and whether a login page blocks the QR link.
- 4
Brief the speakers on where polls come in their slides.
- 5
Test with phones set to three or four different languages before doors open.
- 6
Run the games, read questions aloud, and finish the evening with the awards ceremony.
FAQ
Do attendees choose their language?
Is the host console available in English?
Are questions translated automatically?
How many people can play?
Can remote offices join?
Do we need an app or accounts for staff?
How is it licensed?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
All audience interactions, a second screen and timing in one app. Guests join by QR — internet is needed for you and for them.
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