What You Should Pay Attention to in the Case of Relay

Austria, March 2015, interactive training with 6 active languages: It was once again useful to experience that in the case of a relay – i.e. using a third, intermediate language during interpretation – it’s always worth calling the attention of speakers/trainers to have a little break after they have heard an interpreted contribution  prior to  starting with their own remarks. Otherwise the interpreters working from the intermediate language will still be engaged with interpreting, while the trainer has already started with their contribution. And this inevitably leads to interpreters not hearing the first few seconds of the trainer’s remarks. I don’t think I have to go into details what dangers that bears.

 

When are Fully Automated Interpreting Applications About to Come?

According to a recent article in the New York Times Google is soon going to update its Google Translate app for Android devices, which will be able to recognise speech and language in the case of the most popular languages offering a written translation for them. It’s obvious that it won’t take too long until the application will automatically “read” the translation. Skype has already accomplished that step in December 2014: In the case of Spanish and English it’s offering an interpretation service in real-time. Although the conversation is still limping along from time to time and grammatical aspects play just a secondary role – as can be seen in the video within the article – communication is moving on. As an interpreter, however, the real question is, when these applications are about to deliver an acceptable quality during negotiations or on conferences. The Interpreter’s Blog will keep an eye on this issue and is also going to get the opinion of experts and colleagues.