The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed corporate working styles as well as modes of teaching because remote learning and telework (in other words, working from home) has almost become the norm in many areas of the economy.

Simultaneous interpretation deliveries are not immune to this fundamental change.

Before COVID, gatherings with simultaneous interpretation were usually held at hotels or convention centers. The standard equipment consisting of a booth, a console and microphones were brought in by a technician who stayed on site during the duration of the conference. Simultaneous interpretation was also held at other venues, such as legislatures, where an infrastructure was already in place to allow for this type of service.

This standard arrangement naturally generated costs for the organizers: unless meetings were held in major cities and interpreters hired locally, interpreters needed to either drive or fly to the venue and be compensated for their travelling expenses.

In addition, the equipment had to be brought in, sometimes from a distant warehouse. If the conference spanned over several days, accommodation and per-diem expenses for the interpreters and the technicians were added to the tally, not to mention the room rental costs, making the whole affair quite expensive, especially for smaller size companies.

COVID changed all this. Physical distancing requirements meant that meetings and conferences could no longer be held in ballrooms or corporate meeting rooms. Just like employees learned to work from home, so did the interpreters.   The pandemic made a few lucky ones, in particular developers of internet-based communication platforms such as ZOOM, which became one of the most heavily-used such platforms. Meeting organizers were quick to recognize the many benefits on this new tool, especially in terms of savings. Since the interpreters stayed at home, there was no longer a need to cover their travel costs. Similarly, organizers could now do without an audio-visual company or renting a meeting room in a hotel.  Interpreters also benefited from this new situation as they no longer needed to travel or to dress nicely to perform their services.

I would from my own experience say that there are more simultaneous interpretation services required from providers now than there were before COVID. One possible explanation is that companies, especially the larger companies or governments, have a communication budget to spend entirely before their fiscal years come to a close. Since it has become cheaper to hold meetings online rather than at a physical location such as a hotel, clients are now resorting to those types of online meeting, including those involving simultaneous interpretation, much more often than they would otherwise do. In other words, most interpreters are busier now than they have been before.

Although online simultaneous interpretation has made many happy campers, notably clients and interpreters, this mode of delivery does not come without drawbacks. The first problem is the absolute dependence on the Internet. Should the Internet be down for any reason, there is simply no meeting. The second issue is sound quality. Poor sound quality is a hindrance to good renditions in the interpretation. Ideally, participants should wear a headset with an integrated microphone that, in effect, eliminates background noises because the microphone is inches away from the mouth of the speaker. Too often however, participants speak through their laptop microphone, which almost necessarily increases the distance sound must travel between the speaker and his laptop microphone, thereby allowing all sorts of background noises (including the barking of a dog) to interfere with sound quality.

What about simultaneous interpretation in the post-COVID world? Will we go back to the old days or is remote service here to stay? The question is the same as those facing companies and their employees who were willingly or not forced to work from home. The answer is mixed. While it is true that participants at meeting held remotely certainly miss the human contact with their peers as well as networking and would certainly appreciate the return to the old ways, the savings achieved by remote simultaneous interpretation technology will not be lost on governments and big corporations who, I suspect, will still, whenever practical, resort to that mode of communication.