Telephone and remote interpretation services

Remote interpretation for online events, videoconferences and phone calls

Are you searching for a language solution for online meetings, conferences and events with international guests?

SMG’s simultaneous and consecutive interpretation services are also available remotely and by telephone in over 160 languages!

Thanks to our pool of professional interpreters, we enable our clients to communicate by videoconference or telephone with one or more foreign contacts, benefiting from immediate and accurate interpretation.

Remote interpretation is an innovative solution offering the following benefits:

• Reduces the distance between you and your foreign contacts.
• Makes it easier to plan business trips and meetings abroad.
• Enables a rapid response to unforeseen events, urgent situations or logistical difficulties.

Special types of remote and telephone interpretation

• Dedicated remote interpreter for foreign travel
  

  By booking the assistance of one of our professional interpreters before setting off on a business trip, attending a conference or visiting a trade fair abroad, you can receive language assistance directly on your computer, smartphone or tablet, saving on travel expenses for an on-site interpreter and benefiting from a professional service in over 160 languages.

• On-demand solution for hospitals and public administration
  

  Our cultural mediation and remote interpretation services enable efficient communication with foreign-language speakers, which often requires flexibility and the ability to respond on demand and at short notice. Our interpreters and cultural mediators assist hospitals and public offices with real-time interpretation and language support, including in less widely spoken languages such as Hindi, Urdu, Swahili, Chinese, Arabic, and many others.

• Telephone interpreting to support the sales department
  

  In addition, we provide telemarketing and telesales services in foreign languages to present your products to potential international customers and help you expand your business abroad. We can support your personnel directly on site or by videoconference or carry out the service ourselves and provide a final report on the results obtained.

How we organize a video conference interpretation service with no surprises

When a client requires a remote simultaneous interpretation (RSI) service, it is essential to guarantee not only language quality but also the technical reliability of the entire system.

To this end, our operational and technical team actively assists both the interpreters and the client at all stages, with the aim of ensuring that the platform functions properly, preventing technical problems and helping to ensure the success of the event.

Preliminary tests

• We ask the client to provide the contact details of their technician so that we can carry out functional tests and have a direct point of contact in the event of technical problems before or during the service. If the client does not have a technician, we can provide one of our experts to manage the chosen remote interpretation platform.
• We check the quality of the event venue’s internet connection to ensure a smooth and accessible service for the audience. In general, a stable connection with an upload speed of at least 500 Kbps for each interpreter is required.
• We set up the audio channels through which the online simultaneous interpretation will be delivered, taking into account the limitations of the platform used (maximum number of languages, speaking procedures, audience management, etc.).

Checks of linguistic and technical quality

• We ensure that the working environment of our native-speaking remote interpreters is quiet, interference-free, and suitable for high-quality voice transmission.
• For simultaneous interpretation services lasting more than 60 minutes, we provide two interpreters, organizing balanced shifts to protect vocal health and maintain the quality of the interpretation.
• We perform a functional test at least 1-2 days before the event, simulating the reception of the audio signal by the interpreters and its transmission to the final audience.

Final checks before and during the event

• We repeat the functional test on the day of the event, approximately 1-2 hours before the official start.
• We check that all participants have the necessary devices and technical requirements to access the conference without disruption.
• Finally, during the event, we provide real-time technical support, ready to take prompt action if unforeseen issues arise.

The history of remote interpretation

The rise of simultaneous remote interpreting in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic

Simultaneouss interpretation is an effective form of oral translation for business meetings and corporate events, allowing multiple participants from different countries to be involved without having to find a common lingua franca. Simultaneous interpretation provides the immediate translation of speech thanks to a team of professional interpreters working inside a soundproof booth. The booth is equipped with a microphone console and control unit, which sends the audio signal to receivers distributed to the audience, through which they listen to the interpretation.

However, the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic caused a setback for simultaneous interpretation services. Social distancing rules and the ban on gatherings inevitably ruled out group audiences and teams of interpreters sharing booths, as interpreters are usually paired in the booth for each language combination. However, this did not prevent simultaneous interpretation services from continuing. Thanks to remote working, it was possible to organize business and corporate meetings remotely.

How the professional remote interpretation service worked during the pandemic

Remote simultaneous interpretation was, in fact, a solution driven precisely by the need to restore the contact that the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted. During the pandemic, we saw the first widespread use of remote simultaneous interpretation to support business meetings on platforms such as Skype, Zoom or Google Meet.

There are several ways to provide simultaneous interpretation remotely. To understand them fully, we need to start from the premise that the service requires two or more parallel audio channels: an input channel, through which the interpreter receives the speech in the original language, and one or more output channels, through which the interpreter delivers the interpretation. Unfortunately, online conferences generally have only one channel, consisting of a single ‘virtual room’ for all participants.

Speakers, listeners, and interpreters were all invited to participate in the meeting in the same virtual room. Having everyone on the same audio channel, however, led to situations in which the interpreter’s voice overlapped with the speaker’s, or vice versa. Nevertheless, interpreters managed to provide simultaneous interpretation despite the limitations of a single audio channel, often using imaginative but not particularly effective technical workarounds. For example, one solution involved using a computer connected to the videoconference and, therefore, to the audience receiving the interpretation, together with a mobile phone, so that the interpreter could listen to the speaker on the phone and interpret into the microphone connected to the computer. This solution, however, did not allow the language direction of the audio channel to be reversed, so the interpreter could provide output in only one language: that of the audience.

Today, remote interpretation technology has evolved and, as we have seen above, is now widely used and increasingly effective and functional.