20201005 trans

Cao Runxin 曹润鑫

Modern Interpreting with Digital and Technical Aids

Challenges for Interpreting in the 21st Century

Martin Woesler, Hunan Normal University/China

Abstract

The world is growing in tandem with the Internet, freedom of travel and globalization. Inevitably translation and interpreting are in greater demand, especially online during the coronavirus pandemic. With the beginning of the 21st century, interpreting faces new technical and digital challenges requiring new methods of delivery. Technical developments in the course of digitization have been on the rise and are approaching real-time use simultaneous capability. The technology supporting the interpreter is becoming more and more effective, while an increasing number of systems, such as artificially intelligent programs, are competing with the human being. The interpreter must now be a technology organizer and adroitly adapt to technologically predefined interpreting situations, such as video conferences with augmented reality, tele-interpreting, etc.

Chang Huiyue 常慧月

The movements of migrants within the EU and the influx of refugees from crisis areas outside of it render community interpreting especially of rare languages in unprecedented demand, often resulting in the unsavory use of non-professional and sub-standard interpreters. Existential problems for the entire profession become apparent. Due to networking via the Internet, unqualified interpreters pour onto the market from low-wage countries: with dumping prices and low-quality services, they discredit the profession of the professional interpreter. Meanwhile remuneration practices have been declining, with payment of interpreting services often being delayed or payment defaulted. All these lead to a devaluation of the profession of the interpreter while digital technology throws into doubt the need for the role of the human as interpreter or translator.

Chen Han 陈涵

The positive side of technological advancement is that communication (including translation and interpretation) becomes digital and therefore can be enhanced with artificial intelligence. This enhancement takes interpreting and translation to a new quality level. Translation and interpretation theory needs to adapt to translation and interpretation in the age of artificial intelligence, the focus, which has moved with the functional approaches to the translator, now moves to the target text audience. The new way of interpreting is a human, but digital-technically determined hybrid form of human-machine interactive interpretation, with due respect for the human participation expressed in the form of professional remuneration.

Chen Hui 陈惠

Keywords

interpreting; artificial intelligence; simultaneous interpreting; real-time support; interpreting technology; digitalisation; interpreting software

1.Literature Review

In 2006, Honegger notes in a survey that most prospective interpreters do not use software in the interpreting booth, but work with paper glossaries which they have created with MS Word or MS Excel. Fantinuoli (2011, 50) states five years later that most interpreters still manage their terminology traditionally with MS Word or MS Excel. In 2015 20- to 30-year-old interpreting students state in a survey by Gacek that "software solutions are not sufficiently known among prospective interpreters and therefore are not used" (Gacek 2015, 82). The purpose of the present study is therefore to draw attention to the functionality of software for interpreting booths.

Chen Jiangning 陈江宁

The conference interpreter Anja Rütten (2007) presents valuable information in her information-rich overview, Information and Knowledge Management in Conference Interpreting, and in her numerous blogs in 2013 and 2014 about experiences with hardware and software in conference interpreting. In this paper, also lists of software and technology from Drechsel's interpreting practice in 2005, 2013 are used.

Standard works on the craft of interpreting (Pöchhacker 2004; Stoll 2009) also form the basis of the present study. Only their suggestions are taken up here and they ought to be reconsidered from the perspective of support by software and technology. In addition, current individual studies are evaluated, such as on distance interpreting (Kalina 2010) and explanations on the use of office programs (Fantinuoli 2011), on web corpora (Gurevych 2013), and on Qtrans (Scholz 2008; Gacek 2015). To compare it with the analogue age, the very early Braun 1999 study on video conferencing is used.

Chen Jiaxin 陈佳欣

Since software and technology are developing rapidly, a study inevitably becomes obsolete quickly. To arrive, nevertheless, at more generally valid statements, the present study focuses on developments and functionality, explaining concrete software and hardware only by way of example, with the knowledge that products are often replaced by others and that only a few can last for a long period of time. In order to get an overview of software and hardware, the current master's thesis by Gacek (2015) is used. However, it only refers to a small selection of products and does not come to generally valid conclusions. This study also addresses the polarizing discussion on how much technology and software the interpreter needs. While Spitzer provocatively speaks of the "digital dementia" of interpreters in 2012, Conway (2014) has taken a more balanced approach to the question of the cost-benefit ratio of the computer in the interpreting booth.

Chen Jingjing 陈静静

This paper will also introduce special aspects, like problems posed by trendy community interpreting (Andres 2009) and cheap competition for interpreters, as well as placing networked communication and work on texts in the context of the development of swarm intelligence and a collective consciousness. Finally, a new type of interpreting is called for, which expects at least technical competence from the interpreter, and at most a hybrid human-machine working method. In this paper, the thesis, already passionately advocated historically, that the computer or artificial intelligence could never replace the human being in certain functions such as language (Austermühl 2004), is no longer categorically excluded.

Chen Sha 陈莎

2.Simultaneous Technology/Technology Working in Real Time

While in the past technology did not allow simultaneous work support, i.e. it was not possible for translators to work with simultaneous or consecutive interpreting, this disadvantage seems to have been largely overcome technically at the beginning of the 21st century, although there are still too few apps that make use of these new possibilities.

Arguments against the positive effects of advanced technology include references to over-coding, the abundance of information, etc. These phenomena appear to be a hindrance, especially in connection with the interpreting profession, which requires the highest level of concentration.

Chen Sunfu 谌孙福

Spitzer (2012) for example, poses the question of whether computer work causes a mental deterioration of society. Rütten (2014a), on the other hand, refers to Spitzer, pointing out the advantages of the computer, arguing that it has voice output, retrievability through full-text search, spell checking, sorting, categorization and transmission functions. She suggests as a compromise: "Talking about research, challenging one's own memory and always asking about what is meant and the context - if we take this to heart, we have a good chance of making the computer a valuable training tool and an excellent assistant.”

Chen Yongxiang 陈永相

2.1 Technology to Support the Interpreter

2.1.1 Preparation

Even if a consecutive interpreter is standing next to the speaker, armed with a stenographer's notepad and pencil, and interprets him or her in an apparently analogous manner, even he or she cannot do without technology these days.

Even during the preparation stage, his duty of care requires him to take into account the accessible sources, some of which are electronic.

Even more technical possibilities are offered if the interpreter asked to use his own initiative receives speech manuscripts beforehand. These can be scanned, transcribed and prepared, for example by automatic color coding of verbs and realities, which Stoll (2009, 84f.) also recommends for analogue preparation, as it improves anticipation and simplifies syntactic planning.

Cheng Yusi 成于思

In addition to the concrete preparation of the text to be interpreted, more general preparation can also be supported technically.

Drechsel (2005, 16f.) lists, for "preparation for the conference topic and the creation of glossaries, electronic tools such as search engines, web catalogues, topic portals, scientific websites, company or customer websites, library catalogues, online libraries, specialised services for e-publications, online magazines, newsgroups and others are used.”

Online comparison with existing acronyms/abbreviations (Stoll 2009, 85) is also helpful.

Deng Jinxia 邓锦霞

Of course, ad hoc knowledge acquisition (Gile 2009) prior to the conference also counts as preparation, such as requesting speech manuscripts and presentations, often in file form. Preparation does not only take place in the weeks before the assignment ("advance preparation", Gile 2009), but also on site a few minutes before the assignments ("last minute preparation", Gile 2009) and during the interpreting breaks ("in-conference preparation", Gile 2009). Stoll categorizes the areas of interpreting preparation as "general technical", "terminological" and "interpreting strategy" (Stoll 2009, 86).

Ding Daifeng 丁代凤

Here, search engines or electronic dictionaries are often faster than paper dictionaries. Moreover, if, for example, the conference program/list of speakers is updated on a website, the interpreter can adjust his or her planning by accessing the website without further consultation with the client.

In principle, all technical aids should meet the requirements of being user-friendly, having a fast or real-time response time and being manageable.

Fang Jieling 方洁玲

2.1.2 Speech to Text in Real-time with Low Error Rate

Every smartphone today has a mode or apps with which it records speech and converts it into text in real time with a now justifiably low number of errors. This simple function alone is valuable for the apparently analogue consecutive interpreter: He can put his shorthand pad in a folder in which, for example, the smartphone is inserted on the left and has written down the spoken text as text.

Gan Fengyu 甘奉玉

While he works with his notes in interpreting notation on the right, as he used to do on the right, and can insert the pen into a holder on the folder if necessary, the transcription on the left enables him to find his way back into the context at a glance or, at most, with a wiping movement in the event of a pause in his hesitation (colloquially known as a 'hang up') or even a 'blackout'.

Drechsel (2013) demonstrates the use of the following programs/websites on the Ipad (which helps him to concentrate on individual processes): Documents (manages documents and allows editing), Interplex, LookUp (terminology databases), Wikipedia, Google.

Gao Mingzhu 高明珠

Tablets like the Ipad have the following advantages over the conventional laptop, notebook or netbook in the cubicle: They are lighter, smaller, handier, the battery lasts longer, typing is silent, you can use apps, your work is not interrupted by updates or pop-ups, you can take notes by hand and record things in the background for archiving or follow-up. Of course, due to the data protection regulation, the consent of the client must be obtained before recording.

Gong Yumian 龚钰冕

The disadvantage of not being able to see several windows at the same time appears to be an advantage to Drechsel (2013) from his personal experience, because it allows him to concentrate better on one thing. However, he neither has all the Office applications with him nor his domestic terminology databases. A possible compromise could be a laptop with a touchscreen.

Gu Dongfang 顾东方

2.1.3 From Text in Source Language to Text in Target Language

Not yet very professional but available as prototypes are transcription systems that offer a translation in a second screen (e.g. translator.google.com, fanyi.baidu.com, for European languages DeepL.com) in addition to the real-time transcription of the source language presented in 1.1.1. On the smart device, for example, an upright screen can be divided into an upper transcription area and a lower translation area.

Guan Qinqing 管钦清

Here, too, constant trial and error is required to improve the quality of the interpretation. It is also individually different how much different information the individual interpreter is able or used to process. If the flow of data is too large, there is a risk that concentration or the flow of production will be impaired.

2.1.4 Keyword Cloud

Helpful for the interpreter's work is the insertion of key terms and their translation into the target language in real time in the form of dynamic clouds, i.e. in real time and the longer a pause before the interpretation of the relevant term lasts.

Gui Yizhi 桂一枝

In my opinion, the development of a corresponding app would be a desideratum. It would not be used intensively, but would be conceived as an additional screen for the corner of the eye, which is preferably perceived subconsciously and which one can turn to when one has a hesitation pause and is looking for stimulation. Here, terms that have been interpreted according to the proposal should turn green and others grey. It should be possible to turn back the displayed cloud by fractions of a second in the timeline by pointing and wiping. Of course, it should be capable of learning, i.e. it should be able to memorize frequent non-standard translations and offer them itself.

In the post-processing phase, the program should offer a list of terms to be practised and has the non-standard translations approved manually by the interpreter.

Guo Lu 郭露

2.1.5 Effects of Technology

The interpreting profession has changed due to hardware and software development, especially since the 1990s, which has essentially made interpreting easier and better. Whether a technology or an app makes it into the consecutive or simultaneous interpreting situation and even into the interpreting booth is subject to the highly subjective decision-making power of the individual interpreter, just like the interpreting notation, which varies from person to person. New techniques should only be tried out if they bring about a real improvement in use.

Han Haiyang 韩海洋

It is not in anyone's interest to use the latest technology for its own sake if this means a loss of quality in the interpretation. Conversely, an interpreter should be open to accept new techniques and software if they can improve his work.

2.1.5.1 The Presence of the Interpreter at the Place of Assignment

The interpreter can influence physical and spatial matters by being present at the place of assignment:

a) He/she can acquire vocabulary in advance in exchange with the client, compile vocabulary lists, practise them and also physically take them into the booth as paper printouts or on the screen.

Han Wanzhen 韩宛真

b) He can request speech manuscripts in advance or speak directly to speakers on site and ask for a copy of their speech manuscripts.

c) In case of early contact with the Interpreter Equipment Company, he may be able to influence positioning the interpreting booth so that he can see the speaker and the PowerPoint presentation. In the case of video conferences (e.g. by zoom, voom/Tencent Meeting, BigBlueButton, Skype, Tencent Classroom, MS Teams etc.), he can make sure that he can see all the speakers, including those who appear on screens, so that he can also recognize non-verbal signals and incorporate them into the interpretation. In principle, it is recommended that the interpreter is also shown on screens or in video conferences on a small side window in order to better understand the interpretation.

He Changqi 何长琦

d) Before the event, the interpreter can be introduced to the interpreting equipment by the technician and test the audio system, determine and announce the channel-language assignment (experienced clients post these and instruct the staff who issues the receivers to inform the participants of the assignment), adjust the volume of the headphones and arrange the aids on the work table.

Hu Baihui 胡百辉

e) He/she can coordinate with his/her interpreting colleague regarding, e.g. glossaries, agenda, and exchange documents, then both can determine the approximate intervals between changes or simply notice during the assignment if the colleague is at a loss and give a helping hand with writing a missing term on a piece of paper. He/she can also nudge him/her to draw his/her attention to something. He/she can share glossaries and documents electronically, e.g. with the Interplex program simply with a swipe to the left. He/she can also take over the interpretation prematurely in case of exhaustion of his/her colleague.

Hu Huifang 胡慧芳

The number of distance interpreting assignments has already been increasing before the coronavirus pandemic, but with Corona, it exploded. Before Corona, a combination of telephone and web communication was used. With the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom was used more frequently and the Business version comes with a conference interpreter menu.

AIIC, BDÜ, European institutions and other international organizations agreed (Kalina 2010) on the following conditions as minimal professional standards for distance interpreting:

Hu Jin 胡瑾

- As a rule, a direct view of the room should be possible.

- To avoid multilingualism, distance interpreting should only be used in exceptional cases when more than six active languages are spoken. But even then, as many booths as possible should be available in the room and the booths of the distance interpreters should not be too far away.

- High-definition monitors should be installed in front of and not in the booths.

- The remote interpreter should be able to communicate directly with the client and the cameramen.

- Teams should regularly consist of a minimum of three remote interpreters".

Ji Tiantian 纪甜甜

2.1.5.2 Higher Validity through Explanation and Correction Functions

In the university lecture hall, students critically accompany, verify and check for errors in the statements of the lecturer by simultaneously reading in Wikipedia, Baike Baidu, etc., and in search engines such as Google, and Baidu and, if necessary, manually validate or question the statements in accompanying chats (e.g. in the WhatsApp or WeChat group of the course). In a technically mediated interpreting situation, it is now possible to show alternative translation suggestions to participants. This is useful in reducing misunderstanding when a) politically/religiously/culturally sensitive terms appear, b) different groups of recipients may have different understanding of the same term, for instance, a socialist-authoritarian country and a liberal-democracy] state perceive political ideologies, systems and concepts through a spectrum of shades and hues. Recognition of the various nuances, the multifaceted implications and the degree of value-laden presumptions for each individual recipient serve to ease tension and foster communication.

Jiang Fengyi 蒋凤仪

2.1.6 Special Features in the Booth

Computers or smart devices allow you to view presentations, documents and notes. However, reference by typing during the interpreting process is hardly possible due to time constraint. Therefore, text to speech and speech to text modules become more important.

In exceptional situations, such as a 'blackout' or a hesitation break, the technique of stalling, i.e. inserting neutral expressions without new information together with deceleration of the target text production, could be useful strategies (Pöchhacker 2004, 132ff).

Jiang Hao 姜好

2.1.7 Software Examples

When naming selected software, I follow the list and evaluation of Janovska (2011).

To this day, interpreters continue to manage their terminology with Office programs such as Word or Excel (Fantinuoli 2011, 50). However, searching is cumbersome with Ctrl+F, and only the first entry found is displayed. Better suited are Interplex simple, LookUp (search without Enter key, which also has a separate module for Word, Janovska (2011, 80); it also has input fields such as customer, topic and project for additional information, terminology extraction, vocabulary trainer, semantics filter and sorting functions, Honegger (2006, 2) and Rütten (2014f), Terminus (a) good multilingual terminology management system and TermDB developed by conference interpreter Christian Vogeler but discontinued in 2012. But here, too, Fantinuoli (2011, 51) complains that the hit rate cannot be reduced by stop words and that the errors in the glossary cannot be corrected.

Jiang Qiwei 蒋淇玮

Gacek (2015) presents numerous programs: Interpreters' Help (Gacek 2015, 55), a new browser-based web application from 2014 for all browser-based operating systems and for Boothmate for Mac OS X. It offers the possibility of synchronization offers with fast search function. The currently available beta version and the license for students are free of charge.

Gacek (2015, 56) also introduces the Glossary Assistant program, which is still in development. It presents glossaries clearly on tablets, - the focus is not on mobile phones, - and makes them editable, see also Rütten (2014g) and Martin (2014). The program is currently only available for Android tablets and is free of charge.

Kang Haoyu 康浩宇

The Intragloss program, which Gacek (2015, 57) presents, was "developed by AIIC conference interpreter Dan Kenig and software developer Daniel Pohoryles". "The aim of the program is to facilitate the creation and use of even extensive multilingual glossaries". "Glossaries can be created directly within a preparation document or within a website.” Gacek values this as “very useful” and gives the example “making a list of problematic terms after receiving a last-minute document”. He also points to the fact that “Appropriate filter and sorting functions alphabetical, by website, by chronological order are also provided. A glossary created from a web page is automatically updated, which is an advantage for future. Like InterpretBank software, Intragloss also offers the possibility of automatic translation of terms, with the search for translation suggestions in large translation portals (IATE, GDT, Linguee, Termium, WordReference, etc.). Other useful functions include the clear comparison of different language versions of a document". A free trial version is available for Macintosh devices, see also Kenig (2014).

Kang Lingfeng 康灵凤

Gacek (2015, 61-63) tests and describes in detail the InterpretBank program in version 3 2014, which aims to "provide interpreters with a sophisticated corpus-linguistic tool". "InterpretBank was developed by Claudio Fantinuoli, a graduate interpreter working in the Department of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz" (Gacek 2015, 62). "InterpretBank is a modular tool that provides interpreters with computer support in the field of knowledge and terminology management before, during and after a simultaneous interpreting assignment" (Gacek 2015, 63). Gacek lists the three modes offered by the program: "TermMode: Module for creating and managing glossaries; in addition, various functions can be used, such as automatic translation of terms and searching for definitions from the Internet. MemoryMode: Module for visual memorization of bilingual glossaries. ConferenceMode: Module for cabin-friendly reference during the interpretation." (Gacek 2015, 63).

Kong Xianghui 孔祥慧

Rütten (2014) judges: "Very user-friendly, many nice functions; organised by glossaries (which, technically speaking, are subject areas tagged to each entry), has all the essential data categories (customer, project etc.) and a very nice flashcard-like memorising function. The quick-search function ignores accents. It is limited to five languages and you cannot add endless numbers of individual data fields. Intrepretbank is platform independent, works on Windows, Mac and Android (Gacek 2015, 63), costs 69 Euro, for students 39 Euro, university teachers (and their students) get a free demo license.

The interpreters also use very simple websites and programs such as the search engine Google, the Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, dictionary programs such as Langenscheidt and systems for teamwork such as Google Docs. Typical concordance programs are WebSleuth, WebResearch, Black Widow, Site Ripper.

Kong Yanan 孔亚楠

Terminology extraction enables Easy Concordance, and Concordance. Text to speech can handle most operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Operating System), there are also special programs for it like Ivona Reader (from 49 €) with the free MiniReader version, TextAloud (19.99 €). There are programs for fast reading (so-called "Improved Reading") like "A Faster Reader" (for Android smart devices) and programs for managing documents like the app "Documents" (for Apple iOS), in which among other things search functions can be used and a web browser can also be opened, or OneNote. The website www.wortwarte.de is supposed to present neologisms, but it is not up to date (visited September 11, 2020 by M.W.).

Lei Fangyuan 雷方圆

The program BootCaT creates topic-specific web corpora: "The users first define the search terms. Then, web pages are collected, which contain the combination of these search terms", see Gurevych (2013, 546). At the end a text corpus is created, “with which one can quickly get an overview of the content and terminology, for example, of the keywords ‘energía solar’ in Spanish or ‘solar energy’ or ‘solar power’ in German”, see Rütten (2008).

Lei Kuangxi 雷旷溪

In addition, there are Termprofile, Endnotes, Qtrans-Search Bar. The latter is rated by Gacek (2015), 50 as "no pop-up windows, faulty queries or other inconveniences". Also Scholz (2008) presents Qtrans: "One of the great advantages of the tool, however, is its low threshold: the software can be used without training, is system-independent, requires no installation and is immediately ready for use.” Scholz also explains, that it is not based on its own search technology, but passes parameters to other services; “therefore it is easily adaptable and can integrate any internal and external data sources via HTTP” (Scholz 2008).

Li Haiquan 李海泉

For preparation and simultaneous use, there is the glossary software Interplex, which is capable of handling multitasking. It can import glossaries from Word or Excel and is available for Windows, iPhone and iPad. In 2020, it costs US$ 75 and there is a free demo version available. More features for conference interpreters are offered by Term LookUp, which cost US$99 in 2019. In 2020 the author of this paper only found the free version and IntelliWebSearch (free).