Language agencies bill hospitals $120 an hour and hand you a fraction of it. SPI is the register that removes them. You set your rate and keep all of it, clients reach you directly, and the worth goes to the professional who earned it. You keep 100% of your rate. SPI never takes it out of your pay.
Get verified and listed on the public register so clients find and book you directly. Set your own rate and keep 100% of it. No membership required.
Get listed free The Society · Membership24 hours of CEUs, 24 hours of live group practice, practice scripts in your language, verifiable badges, mentorship, and the Commons.
Explore the SocietyNew to interpreting? Start your training at the AALB academy.
Both tiers are real membership, and both are earned. From the day you are verified you are working: your own page on the public register, your own rates, real appointments booked directly with no agency in between. Free is not a directory entry that sits still. Full adds the Society that sharpens the interpreter behind every booking, and credentials the work year after year.
Apprentice is a separate free path for AALB students still in training, with mentorship and recorded continuing education while building toward the register. Tiers are assigned by what you have earned and verified, never by what you pay.
The agency bills the hospital. The interpreter does the work. Watch who keeps the money.
Same interpreter. Same hour. The interpreter goes from $45 to $100, the hospital still pays less than the agency charged, and the margin the middleman skimmed went to the person doing the work.
Illustrative figures. SPI takes a flat 10%, added on top and shown in full. Agency splits vary and are rarely disclosed, which is the point.
No markup buried in a bill. The interpreter sets their rate and keeps every dollar of it. We add a flat 10% on top, and everyone sees it.
That is the whole arrangement. Maria keeps her $120, we earn $12 for the connection and the platform, and the client sees exactly where every dollar of their $132 goes.
Every record is a working interpreter whose credentials were reviewed by SPI staff. This is the register you join, and the company you would keep.
Most directories let anyone write anything. On the registry, credentials are reviewed by SPI staff before a single badge appears, and the record keeps proving itself over time.
National certifications (CCHI, NBCMI, NAJIT), state licenses, and training milestones are checked by staff and stored as verifiable badges.
Optional proctored ILR testing puts a formal proficiency rating, ILR 3, 3+, or 4, on the record. The scale institutional clients already trust.
Continuing education auto-logs to the record: 72 hours a year across accredited CEUs, live practice, and engagement. Verification you can watch grow.
At 2 a.m., a verified interpreter is not a line item.
When a Dari speaker arrives in your emergency department, language access becomes the difference between informed consent and confusion. SPI exists so the person in that room is trained, verified, and still getting better, and paid fairly for it.
Society of Professional Interpreters · A program of Americans Against Language BarriersSearch the verified SPI register by language and specialty, then book and pay the interpreter directly. Every record is vetted by the Society, and there is no agency in the middle.