Remote Simultaneous Interpreting and COVID-19: Conference Interpreters’ Perspective | Metaglossia: The Translation World | Scoop.it
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Part of the Corpora and Intercultural Studies book series (COINST,volume 9)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought face-to-face meetings to a halt almost overnight. Shortly afterwards, however, gatherings were moved online and remote communication tools enabled interpreters to resume servicing meetings. Remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) has now boomed and its widespread use has brought about fundamental changes in conference interpreting. While distance interpreting had been around for years, particularly in certain settings such as court or health interpreting (Ozolins 2011; Braun and Taylor 2012), or when remote participants occasionally took part in face-to-face conferences (Braun 2015; Ziegler and Giglioblanco 2018; TDFI-AIIC 2018), most interpreters were suddenly confronted with new and challenging working conditions. This chap will present how conference interpreters coped with this new reality. It will lay out their view on working conditions, how they perceived the impact of RSI on the interpreter’s performance, the main issues and opportunities identified in RSI, as well as their outlook on the future role of RSI in the profession. These findings are part of a wider survey-based study conducted one year into the pandemic, between March and April 2021. The survey collected valid data from 849 respondents, all of them conference interpreters with at least 5 years of professional practice, from 19 countries.

Keywords

  • Remote simultaneous interpreting
  • Distance interpreting
  • Conference interpreter’s perspective
  • Working conditions
  • COVID-19

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