Remote Interpreting: Lights, Camera, Action!

Your two favourite terp podcasters are back in action! Welcome to our brand new miniseries, taking a look at remote interpreting. Join us and our amazing guests chatting how everything has changed.

A big shout out to our sponsors the Sign Language Interpreting Service (SLIS) and the Citizens Information Board (CIB) without which this miniseries wouldn't have happened.

Let us know what you think about all this remote work!

Ciara and Romy 

xxx

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):

(singing).

Ciara (00:05):

Hi, my name's Ciara.

Romy (00:06):

Hi, my name's Romy.

Ciara (00:08):

And this is... The Lean.

Romy (00:10):

The Lean. Well, we should actually say this is our mini series.

Ciara (00:16):

This is the Lean mini serious. Series. Not serious. Series. Whole brand new series, still can't speak.

Romy (00:24):

Well, one day we'll be able to speak English real good. I swear.

Ciara (00:28):

We will.

Romy (00:29):

And this is our mini series on remote interpreting.

Ciara (00:32):

Remote interpreting. All about it.

Romy (00:35):

Why have we chosen this topic, Ciara? Give us a little bit more.

Ciara (00:39):

Well, Romy, let me tell you.

Romy (00:40):

Tell me all.

Ciara (00:41):

In case you didn't know, we're currently sad. There's a pandemic. COVID-19 has came and I suppose disrupted all of our lives. And along with us, many an interpreter has now found themself working remotely. And a lot have never worked remotely before. Some have worked remotely and are still frazzled because it's all very new. So it is quite the hot topic at the minute.

Romy (01:09):

It is. For sure.

Ciara (01:10):

So we felt sure it deserved, not just an episode, a mini series.

Romy (01:15):

A mini series, which the only reason this was able to come into fruition is actually because we got sponsorship for the first time ever as a podcast, which is super exciting.

Ciara (01:26):

Yeah, we did.

Romy (01:26):

Super exciting.

Ciara (01:26):

Very exciting.

Romy (01:27):

And we need to give a big shout out to our sponsors and collaborators, the Sign Language Interpreting Service, SLIS, who are funded by the Citizens Information Board. So a massive shout out and thank you to both of them for this wonderful opportunity to bring you a mini series.

Ciara (01:43):

A mini series. We have so many exciting guests.

Romy (01:48):

So many exciting guests. And we're not going to tell you who's going to be on yet because we want to leave you in suspense. But I guess we should talk a teeny weeny bit about our experiences. You had remote experience before coronavirus hit the world.

Ciara (02:04):

It's true. I work part time as a remote interpreter in a remote interpreting service, but we do mostly VRS interpreting, so a lot of phone relay, interpreting calls, that kind of thing. And I thought, Ciara, you're in a pretty okay position. You've done some remote interpreting. You can ride this thing out. You'll probably be all right. However, I was wrong, because remote interpreting has so many things that I had never had to deal with before. The service I work in, we've got a structure that we use and everything we do is kind of fitted into that structure. And it's a great service, but there's only so many things we can do. Whereas, when you're kind of thrown into remote interpreting, as I'm sure so many people probably listening to this have felt, that everything that they were doing was then switched completely online. Never would we have expected a lot of the things that were happening online to actually be happening online, and suddenly they were. And I think, along with most of the interpreters, I don't think I was fully prepared for what was about to come. So I've had a real learning experience. I don't know about you, Romy, but I find remote interpreting quite hard. I won't lie.

Romy (03:15):

It's so, so hard. So before this, I was always on site interpreting, because it was a lot of conferences, high level meetings, workshops, not things that one would ever consider putting online. And then boom, they're all online. And it was a scramble to get my setup going. It did take quite a long time to get a decent studio space going. I work with a company called Overseas Interpreting, who, as a team, we've worked really hard to make sure we have a very good setup. But it did take quite a long time to get things ... I think I had to wait seven weeks, maybe even two months, for the proper camera, the lights, everything. And then we got a backdrop and it was the wrong size. And then you do conferences online, and working as a team online, it's so different and so challenging.

Ciara (04:07):

I think it's good that we love learning because all that I found to be doing in the past couple of months is learning, literally everybody learning together. So we've learned a lot; we've so much more to learn. I'm very excited for the things we're going to be talking about. We're going to be looking at, like you mentioned, adapting, setting up your studio. How does a corner of your bedroom suddenly become your office? You know what I mean?

Romy (04:33):

Yeah.

Ciara (04:33):

There's so much. That's definitely something that we're going to be chatting to one of our guests about.

Romy (04:39):

We're also going to take a look at boundaries. It used to be, you would go to your job and you would come home, or you'd go to your VRS set up and then you'd come home. Now, we're kind of stuck in our houses working and the boundaries are getting a little bit vague. It's really hard to separate work from personal. And much, much more about that; we'll be taking a look at that.

Ciara (05:04):

There's just so much.

Romy (05:06):

So much.

Ciara (05:07):

There's so much. There's so much to remote interpreting. I always think it's a different way of interpreting, if you like.

Romy (05:11):

Yeah.

Ciara (05:11):

It's a different ... You know what I mean?

Romy (05:18):

Yeah.

Ciara (05:19):

And we got wonderful training.

Romy (05:21):

We did.

Ciara (05:22):

And we've had to kind of use our training and try to adapt it to remote interpreting because it's a whole other ball game. It's just wild. Wild.

Romy (05:33):

Not only for interpreters, but for the deaf community as well, because now-

Ciara (05:36):

Exactly.

Romy (05:37):

... Everything is even more remote. I mean, there's got to be some positives to that, maybe more access than there originally was, but there's got to be some challenges with that too. So, that will also be another thing we explore on our mini series.

Ciara (05:50):

Exactly. How does a 3D language suddenly become 2D? [crosstalk 00:05:58].

Romy (06:00):

And I think that wraps up what our mini series is going to be about.

Ciara (06:03):

That's what it's going to be. It's going to be lots of learning, lots of fun.

Romy (06:06):

And lots of chats. It is.

Ciara (06:07):

Our favorite thing to do. Lots of wonderful guests as per usual. Lots of giggles, I'm sure.

Romy (06:12):

Oh, yeah.

Ciara (06:12):

When have we ever done anything without giggling our way through it?

Romy (06:17):

Literally the only way we get through interpreting is just laughing and smiling and hoping for the best.

Ciara (06:23):

Yeah. So, that's the plan. Thank you again to SLIS, the Sign Language Interpreting Service, and Citizens Information Board, CIB, for funding us, let this happen. It's all very exciting. We're really going places now, Romy. There's no stopping us. But yeah, I hope you all enjoy. And as always, we're going to have our English version on all of your favorite podcast platforms, and then our [inaudible 00:06:50] version will be on our YouTube channel, where you can watch, you can listen.

Romy (06:55):

And if you'd like to support us even more, we now have a Patreon page, The Lean Podcast. Feel free to subscribe a monthly subscription for a lot of fun, new content, early episode launches, and much more.

Ciara (07:08):

Behind the scenes action. Social influencers.

Romy (07:13):

What? What?

Ciara (07:15):

In the meantime, if you can't wait for the mini series to start, make sure to follow us on all of our social media platforms.

Romy (07:23):

We're everywhere.

Ciara (07:24):

Instagram, Twitter, at theleanpodcast_. Facebook, YouTube. I think that's everyone.

Romy (07:31):

That's it.

Ciara (07:34):

You can email us, theleanpodcast@gmail.com. If you have any questions about remote interpreting, that we probably won't be able to answer, but we'd love to know them.

Romy (07:40):

That's why we're doing this.

Ciara (07:41):

I don't think there's anything left to say except, I've been Ciara.

Romy (07:44):

And I've been Romy.

Ciara (07:45):

And this has been-

Romy (07:46):

The Lean.

Ciara (07:51):

The Lean.

Speaker 1 (07:51):

(singing).

Romy (07:52):

We would like to thank Roy McGuire, our video technician extraordinaire, Isabelle Walshe, our art director supreme, Aisling Dragoi, our dream translator, as well as all of our guests for making these episodes possible. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Lean Podcast, the mini series. This has been made possible thanks to the Sign Language Interpreting Service, SLIS, and the Citizens Information Board. Without them, this never would have happened. Please follow us on our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram at theleanpodcast_, and know that we now have a Patreon account. So if you have any euros to spare, we would really appreciate them so we can continue doing what we love, talking about interpreting. Thanks for listening. Bye.