The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2017 - 14

FEATURE

BY BARRY SLAUGHTER OLSEN
everyone on the planet communicates.
We're now communicating in ways that
we couldn't have imagined at the turn
of the 21st century-and across more
borders, cultures, and languages than ever
before. Consequently, interpreting services
are often needed with much less lead
time, sometimes instantly, in places where
it was never needed before and in ways
never conceived of previously.
My hope is that after reading this
article you'll have a broader vision and
better understanding of what remote
interpreting is and may become, how
it's changing and expanding how we
work, how clients access the services we
provide, and how we have a once-ina-generation opportunity to shape the
way we will work remotely. What's going
on is game changing and shaking our
profession from top to bottom.

THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT

Remote Interpreting:
Feeling Our Way into the Future
New communications technologies make interpreting available where it wasn't
in the past. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the way we
will work remotely, because what's going on is game changing and shaking our
profession from top to bottom.

I

n April 2015, I published an article and
video on the blog A Word in Your Ear
by Lourdes de Rioja called "Technology
and Interpreting: Three Questions on
Every Interpreter's Mind."1 In that video,
I addressed some of technology's broad
effects on interpreting. In this article, I'd
like to address a specific technology topic
that's also on many interpreters' minds-
remote interpreting.
Remote interpreting is a vast field
and one that cannot be done justice
in all its depth and breadth in one
relatively short article. What's more, the
growth of remote interpreting is taking
place within a much broader context
14

The ATA Chronicle | May/June 2017

of radical technological change that's
affecting society as a whole. Demand for
interpreting is expanding and evolving
because mobile communications
technology has completely changed the
way we communicate. Keep in mind that
this has happened in a relatively short
period. Not over a century or even over a
generation, but in about a decade.
Ten years after the beginning of the
smartphone revolution and the launch
of the iPhone in 2007, it's probably
impossible to quantify exactly how much
mobile technology has influenced and
expanded human communication, but it
has completely changed how just about

Let me begin with a brief analogy. In
many ways, remote interpreting is like
the proverbial elephant being described
by several blind men who are touching
it in different places. Unable to see the
entire animal, they must rely only on
their sense of touch.
"It's long and round and it bends like a
snake," says the one touching the trunk.
"No, it's hard, smooth, and pointed,"
says another running his hand along one
of the tusks.
Still another says, "No, it's big and rough
like a wall," as he feels the elephant's side.
And yet another touching one of the
animal's strong back legs says, "You're all
wrong. It's thick and round like the trunk
of a tree."
And so they argued, each convinced
that he was right and that the others
surely didn't know what they were
talking about. The irony is they were all
right-at least to a degree. However, by
relying exclusively on their own personal
experience, they were unable to piece
together the bigger picture. They were
incapable of gaining a broader vision of
what the entire elephant looked like.
I see something similar happening with
how interpreters often perceive remote
interpreting. Let me explain.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2017
