Nowadays, online meetings and conferences, and various webinars are quickly becoming the new normal. It is certainly not a new way to work and study. However, it has become more common in the last year than it has ever been before.
Whether you are working with colleagues from overseas, hosting a webinar or attending a conference with an international audience, you may benefit greatly from using the services of an interpreter.
In this article, we will take a quick look at why you might need an interpreter at an online meeting and the peculiarities of interpreting in virtual environments.
Why do you need an interpreter?
You may well have a decent, or good, command of the languages involved in your international online meeting. However, you can still benefit greatly from hiring a professional interpreter.
A professional interpreter, especially one trained in the particular subject area of the meeting, will convey information accurately, help participants avoid misunderstanding, and allow the meeting to run more smoothly. Professional interpreters also have vast cultural knowledge and can therefore prevent cultural misunderstandings as well.
Moreover, you can’t always know for sure the language level of all the participants and the accents they speak with. When faced with an unfamiliar accent, you can spend too much effort trying to understand it, rather than achieving the goals of the meeting.
Our team of experienced interpreters are highly trained, and capable of handling online meetings of various kinds. By working with a professional interpreter, you will be able to reduce language-related stress, and focus on the agenda of the meeting. Thereby achieving better results.
Peculiarities of virtual interpreting
In its essence, virtual interpreting is very similar to in-person interpreting: it is still oral translation from one language into another, whether you do it online or offline. However, there are a few differences that require special preparation and/or practice. Let’s take a look at a couple of the key ones.
- Virtual interpreting is more impersonal. Even with a video connection, a virtual meeting lacks some of the non-verbal context an offline meeting has. Some things just do not translate well on camera, nuance may be lost due to imperfect audio/video quality. Any interpreting requires preparation, but because of this, virtual interpreting requires it even more. Firstly, it is essential for the interpreter to be aware of the topic of the meeting/webinar. But also, they should be prepped on the event, speaker(s), participants, as well as technical, and other, key details.
- The tech involved plays a very important role. A bad Wi-Fi connection, poor audio or video quality, a slow computer — all this can, if not ruin the meeting, then make it much more tedious and lower its success. Good technical preparation is required on all sides, and you may even need to invest in some high-quality equipment.
Virtual meetings in Zoom
Nowadays, Zoom is one of the best, and most popular, video-conferencing platforms. It offers a variety of features, such as various presentation tools, private chats, recording and playback, and many others. One of these features is interpreting for online meetings. It allows the interpreter to have their separate audio channel. The participants of the meetings can select the original audio or the translation, as well as have the original audio at a lower volume, or mute it altogether.
This feature is very easy to set up and very convenient for online meetings and webinars. You can read more about it (from Zoom), and how to set it up here, or simply contact us for more information.
