Simultaneous Interpreting, Consecutive Interpreting, or Ai Interpreting: What’s Best for Your Live Translation Needs?
Interpreting for meetings, interviews, and other sessions — online or in person — requires more than one approach. If your business conducts frequent live translation sessions, you’ve likely researched or tried two common methods: simultaneous interpreting and consecutive interpreting. (These two techniques are explored in more detail in the sidebar to the right.)
Now there’s a new interpreting option for consideration. It’s an AI interpreting software solution that can add greater security, efficiency, and (depending on volume) affordability to your interpreting toolset. This article is intended to help you understand the differences in methods so you can find the right one for your needs and budget.
Adding AI to Live Translation
Translation services powered by generative AI are the latest frontier in live interpreting. This method, using a desktop computer with an installed translation software solution, can replace live interpreting in some cases. This allows interviews to proceed as if they had the services of a simultaneous interpreter present. This can be cost-effective if your company conducts frequent interviews with a language barrier.
The AI interpreting software method is closer to simultaneous interpretation than consecutive interpretation, because the technology can deliver a translation of spoken words with only a few seconds of lag. This short delay allows the speakers to keep up the cadence of their conversation without pauses. It also echoes a common use case for consecutive interpreting, however, in that it facilitates a two-way conversation between two individuals who don’t share a common language.
How Does Ai Interpreting Work?
The Ai Translate Live Interview Solution is a software solution installed on a client’s on-premises computer. The service is enabled via a monthly or annual subscription license.
In a one-on-one context, the users of the software — interviewer and interviewee — sit at the same computer and use either their own microphone or the device’s built-in microphones to communicate. The solution takes in their spoken words and outputs the translated speech as either written text (on screen) or spoken words. Participants can seamlessly read or hear a speaker’s words in their own language, then speak (or type) a reply that is picked up and translated just as quickly, keeping the flow of the discussion unbroken. With the use of headsets, it’s possible for both parties to receive audio translation in near-real-time.
The solution is also compatible with large monitors to provide live written interpreting for a whole audience of people who don’t understand a presenter’s native language. Depending on your organization’s most common translation scenarios, you can tweak the deployment of this digital interpreting solution to deliver the right experience for each situation.
Ai Translate Live Interview Translation Benefits
Rather than serving as a replacement for all live interpreting by human interpreters, AI-powered machine translation software is a situational option to suit specific needs. Here are some benefits that accrue to certain use cases.
● Cost savings and productivity benefits around frequent interpreting: If your organization conducts frequent interviews that require in-person translation services, it can be more economical to license an AI interpreting software solution than to repeatedly hire live interpreters. Having the technological solution in-house also allows you to skip the process of scheduling and booking interpreters when you need translation. For companies that conduct 8-10 live interpreting sessions per month, the software option may represent an efficient and cost-effective alternative.
● Tight security when dealing with privileged information: Clients at corporations, law firms, law enforcement organizations, government agencies, and medical organizations often deal with sensitive information and worry that interpreting and translation introduce new security risks. Using interpreters brings new people into the workplace and they must be party to conversations that may contain privileged data. Remote interpreting solutions also involve outside parties, servers, and networks. Ai Translate Live Interview Translation runs only on your local system and stores the data on your on-premises computers. This allows you to perform full analysis of all stored conversations, at any time, without going outside your in-house systems.
Live Translation: Get Started
Your ideal mix of translation and interpreting options will depend on your industry, budget and unique circumstances. Linguistic Systems can help you choose the right interpreting solution for your needs, whether live or remote, human or AI-powered. Linguistic Systems offers a curated network of more than 7,500 translators. Our interpreters can serve you in more than 200 languages, and can provide simultaneous interpretation services, consecutive interpretation services, telephone interpretation, and video interpreting. Here are two links to those services.
Ai Translate Live Interview Translation offers AI interpreting software that can translate more than 100 languages and enable seamless conversations via an on-premises computer.
Quick Refresh: Simultaneous Interpreting and Consecutive Interpreting
Before considering an AI-powered interpreting solution, it’s important to understand the established methods. This means defining the differences, advantages and drawbacks of various styles of translation for meetings, interviews and other events.
● Simultaneous interpreting services: In this method, a live interpreter takes in a speaker’s words in one language and conveys it to listeners in a second target language, as close to live as possible. Rather than making the speaker take breaks between phrases, the interpreter works quickly to keep the discussion moving. The end result, typically delivered via headset, is very close to hearing the speaker’s words, simply in a different language.
● Consecutive interpreting services: In consecutive interpreting, an interpreter listens to a speaker complete a phrase, then speaks that message in a second target language so the listeners can understand it. A conversation can be mediated by one person in these cases, allowing each party to make detailed responses based on a translated version of the other’s words.
As a default, both methods assume that the interpreter will be in the room with the participants in the conversation. This could be a large-scale meeting or conference setting, or a more intimate conversation between two speakers.
It’s not always feasible to have everyone in the same place, of course — especially when conducting a digital meeting. This is when methods such as remote telephone interpreting or remote video interpreting come into play. They introduce a slight lag to the proceedings, but enable the conversation to proceed across language barriers and locations.
When Are These Methods Used?
Simultaneous interpreting is an important methodology for meetings and gatherings where speakers will give speeches or make presentations. By transmitting the interpreter’s translated words to listeners, conference interpreting makes it possible to reach a diverse audience from around the world with the same speed and fluidity as if everyone at the meeting was speaking the same language.
Consecutive interpreting is often used in more intimate-scale settings, where the same interpreter may carry both halves of a conversation back and forth. This method is especially important in medical and legal consultations, as well as smaller business meetings where there may be a language barrier. The slight delays are an acceptable price to pay for helping all parties to communicate accurately.
For years, these two methods, plus telephone interpreting, were the basic choices available to companies that needed live translation services. Now, however, digital methods have emerged to help businesses implement more affordable, repeatable, on-premises interpreting.