The future is here. Are you ready to remain competitive?

GOOD
morning
and
welcome
to
this
presenta5on
provided
to
you
as
part
of
the

ProZ.com
2015
Interna5onal
Transla5on
Day
celebra5on.

1

My name is Claudia Brauer and I am the owner of Brauertraining. I was a
translator and interpreter for 35 years in Latin America and the United states
and now I am a trainer of translators and interpreters via webinars at
ProZ.com and my web-based school for translators and interpreters at
Pathwright.!

Today
we
will
talk
about
the
trends
we
need
to
follow
to
prepare
for
the
next
five

years.

We
will
talk
about
the
evolu5on
of
communica5on
and
how
it
affects
you

professional.

We
will
try
to
understand
how
we
have
to
face
the
challenges
ahead
in

a
world
that
requires
more
and
more
of
us
every
day
and
con5nues
changing
at
an

amazing
pace.
And
finally
I
will
talk,
yes,
once
again,
about
the
need
for
translators

and
interpreters
to
become
technologically
savvy
in
order
to
ensure
our
professional

survival
in
a
world
that
is
moving
forward
at
the
speed
of
light.

So,
lets
review
the
housekeeping
issues

4

Please
close
any
other
program
you
are
currently
logged
to
because
other
programs

may
interfere
with
your
sound
or
video
recep5on.

This presentation is being recorded and you will
have full access to your free copy during 90 days so
that you can review it in more detail if you wish to do
so!

The
future
is
here.
All
the
things
we
have
been
talking
about
for
the
past
30
years
are

no
longer
the
maQer
of
science
ﬁc5on
but
a
part
of
our
daily
reality.
So
the
ques5on

now
is,
are
you
ready
to
remain
compe55ve
in
a
professional
and
business
world
that

looks
absolutely
diﬀerent
to
what
it
was
just
20
years
ago?
If
you
are
not,
what
do

you
have
to
do
to
catch
up
with
the
tsunami
of
changes?
That
is
the
core
message
of

my
presenta5on
today.

Let
me
tell
you
that
in
the
course
of
this
presenta5on,
you
will
hear
several
concepts

repeated
mul5ple
5mes.

This
is
so
because
there
are
some
very
important
ideas
I

want
you
to
keep
in
your
brain
and
understand
from
diﬀerent
perspec5ves
and

under
diﬀerent
frameworks.

So
when
I
repeat
a
concept
is
because
I
believe
you

need
to
hold
on
to
it
once
this
session
is
over.
Also,
some
5mes
I
will
simply
remain

silent
so
you
can
read
the
screen.

The changes in the means of communication have changed accessibility to
information, volume of communication, the style of communication and even
the nature or content of our communication
11

To quote the term coined by TAUS, translation is more than ever becoming a
utility, just as water or electricity, a service that is available to all beings in a
society and those who do not have access to that utility are indeed
underprivileged. This is another pivotal change in our history. Until very
recently, translation and interpretation services were the domain of only a few
who had the resources and the speciﬁc need for it. Today it is becoming more
an more a universal right that every person is expecting at all points of
contact.
12

One of the byproducts of this titanic change is the merging of translation and
interpreting. Where the borders between both were clearly defined just five or
10 years ago, today they are becoming progressively blurred and interpreters
are every day more needing to have the tools of translation at their fingertips
and translators are having to learn the complex process of verbal transfer of
meaning.
13

The world is now truly a digital global village. Companies have headquarters
in China as well as London, Egypt and Australia and they expect to conduct
business seamlessly in real time regardless of geographical or time barriers
and now they are also expecting that the language barrier disappears as well.
But individuals have exactly the same expectation of connection in real time
via the hundreds of social media sites where they are connected and
communicating with each other 24 hours a day.
14

The fact that there are no more geographical barriers, that cultural barriers
can be transcended, that time zones are no longer an impediment to
communication and that language access is seen as a right and not a
privilege has created all sorts of new business models.
15

These needs of the digital global village creates the need for instant
communication in every person’s language of preference, regardless of time
or place. And this need has boosted the mechanization of translation to be
able to keep pace with the huge growth in the volume of translation needed
around the world.
16

We humans speak as children many years before we learn to write. Many
today are still oral languages only. Verbal communication is in our DNA. The
world is starting to expect instant deliver of interpreting services at all points
of contact regardless of time, geography or topic.
17

What all this means is that technology is no longer an option if you are a
professional translator or interpreter. Because technology is now a vital part
of your trade. It is a requirement for your professional survival.
18

Finally, crowd sourcing has emerged a response to the need of translation
and interpreting at all points of contact.
19

One of the most important changes I have observed in the entire market of
buyers of translation and interpreting services is that for many, getting the
Gist is just enough. Quality is optional and will be paid for only when it is
absolutely necessary. So we need to understand this and understand how to
live with it and where we as professionals ﬁt in the mix in order to make a
living.
20

Lets
look
at
each
of
these
trends
individually
in
detail.

Dr. Marshall Poe, Associate Professor of History at the University of Iowa,
delivered a lecture speaking on the topic “From Grunts to Tweets:
Communication and Human History”.
23

Communication itself is one of the basic needs of human beings, serving to
give information to others and to get information from others. Innovations in
communication have followed with exponential speed. It took our species
some 150,000 years to go from only verbal communication to writing but only
5000 to invent the printing machine and then only 500 years to develop
television and just 50 to invent the internet.
24

Writing was not really natural to humans and very few within an early society
ever learned to read or write. But even printing in the beginning was used by
elites only and those elites just produced information for other elites. It must
be noted that even today, Americans claim to read only one book a year.

25

Television, on the other hand, was a tremendous democratizing inﬂuence
because it broadcasted information at all levels of society. It is easy to
understand and we humans have a special love for watching and listening.
But the Internet has been even more democratizing at all levels of society
everywhere in the world.
26

27
I want to tell you a real life anecdote to stress this point. One of the slogans
of Pope Francis’ visit to Cuba in 2015 is that he hopes to impact the
availability of food, jobs and the internet for the Cuban people. Now, the fact
that even a Catholic Pope puts the Internet at the same level of priority as
food and jobs tells you how vital instant communication is to the progress of
any civilization in the 21st century. This is a tool that you need to learn to
master as you mastered your language skills.

To some degree, we still use most of the forms of communication we have
used for tens of thousands of years. Each has represented improvement in
the ability to communicate. Nearly all humans learn to speak with ease. But
what we have always sought is to conquer the limitations of space and time.

T

28

29
Everything is now connected or will become
connected. This trend will accelerate in the
immediate future: every device, from the television
to your phone to your fridge can now have a web
address. That web address will connect to content
that will be available in multiple languages.

Smartphones represented the latest development in communication. With the
smartphone, to quote Dr. Pope, “you don’t have to be lonely, you don’t have
to be ignorant.” As a form of computer, it is what all previous forms of
communication were tending toward — it can handle any sort of information.

30

31
75 percent of American workforce and 45 percent
of the global workforce is mobile. There are more
than 1.3 billion workers in the world using mobile
technologies.

The International Federation of Translators is also celebrating international
translation day with a very interesting article title the changing face of
translation and interpreting
33

As the world changes, so do many aspects of the work of translators and
interpreters. Young translators and interpreters of today can barely believe
what they hear when I tell them about the conditions under which I worked
only 30 years ago.
34

IFT’s article also states that we have a plethora of tools to enable us to
translate faster and more consistently. For clients, too, translation has
changed. No longer do they battle to ﬁnd a local translator to meet their
needs, they ﬁnd them literally with a keystroke.
35

They can send out a text before leaving the ofﬁce in the evening and have the
translation waiting when they come in again next morning, thanks to
communication over time zones. They balance their costs and target
audiences over different projects by using translators in different parts of the
world
36

They use telephone interpreters to talk to their own clients on the other side
of the world and remote video interpreters to consult with a doctor in another
country. They can run a text through a machine translation program and get
an immediate idea of what the document is about.

37

38
We are dealing with an explosion in content needing translation. The
Internet, coupled with the slow death of printed material, has brought
about a dramatic increase in the amounts of texts being published on
websites, Blogs and social networks. There are not enough
professional translators to keep up with all of this demand.

39
The massive explosion of informal content needing translation is mind-
boggling. This includes emails, blogs and their comments, tweets,
user-generated content and high-volume websites.. This informal
content is not yet well catered for by the traditional translation industry
but the desire to translate this content is pushing the development of
new tools that will impact the entire industry.

40
The translation industry is experiencing what many industries have in
the past when there is some sort of revolution happening in their ﬁeld.
That is why it is so important that translators are informed about
translation automation in general. Translators will be trans-creators,
post-editors, editors, terminologists, quality assurance advisers, etc.

How
do
you
eat
an
elephant?

One
bite
at
a
5me.

What
this
means
is
that
you
cannot

do
all
you
need
to
do
at
the
same
5me.

You
need
to
start
somewhere.

You
need
to

start
small.
But
you
need
to
start
soon.

Because
ea5ng
the
elephant
is
a
5me

consuming
task.

The
same
is
with
becoming
technologically
savvy.

Learning
the
NEW

ropes
of
your
trade.

It
is
not
an
impossible
task,
but
it
is
a
task
that
does
require

bi5ng
small
bites
at
a
5me
judiciously
and
progressively
improving
your
skills
for
the

new
millennium.

I recently found a story ﬂagged by Jared Tabor in the ProZ forums where it
was brightly stated that there are three things that you need to change. You
need to change your business skills. You need to change your translation
skills. And you need to change your mindset. In essence, really, you need to
change everything you are doing right now.
44

This is the essence of what is happening in today’s world of translation and
interpreting. The way we used to do business does not work any more. The
skills we used to have to be translators or interpreters need to be revamped
and updated. The mindset we used to have about the profession is not in
tune with what the language industry requires of us today. And the most
important word that you will hear me say today is practice. BECAUSE THE
ONLY WAY TO DEVELOP A SKIL IS BY PRACTICING IT OVER AND OVER
AND OVER AGAIN.
45

You have to schedule time for learning and plan a budget to acquire software
and training
46

You need to make some decisions quickly and those are decisions that will
have a profound effect on your professional future because we cannot be it all
or offer it all, so whatever we decide right now is what we will be kind of stuck
with for the coming years. If you are a translator in 2015, you need to
determine what are the new skills sets that you need to remain competitive in
the coming decade.
47

But that is not all. You will also have to look very closely at your infrastructure
in terms of the hardware and software that you have because it might already
be obsolete for the needs of the near future. You have to look at the tools of
your trade, which in this case are your computer and your software and
decide what you need to continue being competitive in the market, what you
need to change and what you need to acquire,
48

You need to decide what type of training you need and where to get it.
Remember that you will not achieve proﬁciency right after you start your
training. There is always a peak of inﬂated expectations and disillusionment
before you reach the expected productivity. Expect a bit of frustration during
your learning curve. It is part of the learning experience in technology.
49

and you have to set aside time, a lot of time again, to deal with your learning
curve. Remember that it is only through repetition that you acquire a skill. Be
judicious in setting aside the time you need for your training.

50

Your training has costs associated with it. They are an investment in your
ability to earn a living. You make an investment and hopefully it will pay off in
the near future by way of increased productivity and efﬁciency, which in turn
should become an increased earning potential.
51

SO, HOW DO YOU UPDATE YOUR BUSINESS SKILLS?
52

You look for training sessions that help you ﬁll the void. Whatever your void is.
Whether it is to start thinking as a small business owner or to improve the
efﬁciency of your sole proprietorship or how to negotiate rates with the larger
players in the industry. Today’s sessions in ProZ for example have a wide
range of topics that address these concerns. All of these are available in
recorded videos for 90 days. And, by the way, I am not employed nor am I
paid by Proz to say this. I am telling you this because it is good for you, not
because I gain anything at all by telling you this.
53

You can also go to the forum section in ProZ.com or in Translators Café or in
any of the forums of the associations and look for information on the business
of translation and interpreting
54

There are so many courses and training videos out there that you really need
to take advantage. Not only in Proz but all over the internet and in local
colleges in your communities. The Small Business Administration also
provides a lot of free resources.
55

We talked about the fact that our client base has changed because there is a
very large percentage of potential clients that really are not ready or not able
to pay for professional services. So you have to ﬁnd the clients that are
willing to pay for your services. You need to learn to market your skills and
penetrate whatever niche it is you want to pursue.
56

57
In this context, it is not enough to be simply highly
skilled in languages. Now you need to learn to
network with peers, potential clients and
dozens of individuals at different points of the
client’s production chain.

HOW DO YOU UPDATED YOUR TRANSLATION SKILLS?
58

Of course I will plug in here my school, where I have more than 50 different
courses and workshops. But Just as I offer these courses and workshops, so
do many others in the industry. You just need to know what it is that you
want to learn and then pursue the best venue that services your needs and
your budget.
59

For example, for those of you who need to update your skills with CAT tools
and other translation software, yesterday’s sessions provide very good tools
and information
60

I want to highlight to you that ProZ has a fantastic resource where they
compare and explain many of the most popular CAT tool, alignment tools and
machine translation tools.
61

Just as Proz offers so many courses and workshops and webinars on topics
that you need for your professional career, so others in the profession also do.
ATA for example also has a very comprehensive list of courses. And the other
associations too. Research your topics and ﬁnd your training and commit to
training. You need it. Believe, you need.
62

Research freeware, which is computer software made available for use free of
charge and for an unlimited time.
63

Servicing 20th century clients is totally different than servicing 21st century
clients. In the 20th century, a client would give me a 10,000 word translation
and if I gave them a 10 day turn around they would be more than satisﬁed.
Today they send 10,000 words and they want it for tomorrow or the next day.
How do you compete with translators that are providing that sort of service?
64

HOW DO YOU CHANGE THE MINDSET?
65

We have traditionally associated literacy with the ability to read and write. But
in the 21st Century we are seeing an equal need to have visual global and
digital literacy. We need to develop visual literacy and global literacy and
digital literacy.
66

We now need to develop the ability to communicate digitally with an
expanding community; we need to be able to read, interpret, respond and
contextualize messages from a global perspective; we need to have the
ability to use computers and other technology to improve our productivity and
performance; and we need to develop the ability to understand, produce and
communicate through visual images; plus the ability to ﬁnd, evaluate and
synthesize information.
67

You need to understand what are your current limitations in terms of
accessibility. What hardware and software do you need to access the
resources of the global community that you need to do your job in an
interconnected world? But more importantly, what do you need to make
yourself accessible to your current and future clients and peers?
68

The other gigantic change in the translation and interpreting industry is in
volume. Although the volume has increased exponentially, translators and
interpreters income keeps dropping. You need to ﬁnd the right level of
efﬁciency to handle the new volumes of work, be competitive, provide
excellent service and at the same time make a decent living.
69

The other change is in the style and nature of the translations and interpreting
assignments. 30 years ago I would receive translations which were only
come from large international corporations or the legal ﬁeld or the military and
government. Today I have been involved in interpreting conversations for
brides by mail, just to give you an example of the change.

70

So the question again is, what do you do if you earn a living as a translator or
interpreter and you see all that is happening. Well, you have to change your
mind set to face the challenges of the 21st century with a 21st century
mindset. You have to understand the needs of your clients, the niche market
you want to service, the technology you need and the business skills you
require. And all of this is in ADDITION to all the language skills you needed in
the ﬁrst place to become a good quality translator and interpreter.
71

TAUS coined the concept of translation as a utility. What is a utility?
Electricity is a utility. Running water and sewerage is a utility. Phone
communication is a utility. In the world of tomorrow, translation will be seen
as a utility. People today expect to have everything around them in their
language of preference, whether in print or verbal format. At all points of
contact.
75

76
If you don’t know what cloud computing is, make sure research it and
understand it because it will impact the profession as it is the platform that
enables globalization and virtualization. Consumers will start
gravitating to personal cloud services and things
like streaming libraries from the cloud, media
archive access and full-featured data
synchronization.

77
Many cloud based systems such as dropbox or
Google drive allow you to share ﬁles and work
anywhere, having permanent access to all your
information and ﬁles. It allows for collaboration in
real time with tracking of multiple contributors, just
to cite one example.

Two of the dominant cloud based translation solutions are XTM Cloud and
Memsource Cloud which allow translation, update and localization of large
volumes of content and may be used by large organizations or individual
freelancers
78

Web-based interpreting is also gaining ground as one of the futuristic options
that allow large corporations and government agencies, including the military,
to access the services of Transinterpreters for many different types of
scenarios all over the world. For example, Transinterpreters may be provided
without any personal danger for war zones and combat situations.
,
79

The other big change here is related to new cloud intranets that are
communicating thousands of workers around the world. An intranet is a
private network that is contained within an enterprise. Transinterpreters are
being called to actively participate in the everyday interactions that are taking
place within intranets all over the world between workers of a same company
who speak many different languages.
80

I am going to talk now about a trend that is a difﬁcult one to swallow for many
of you, so I will give you a few seconds to process it in your mind. *
81

*SILENCE** Last year I coined and published the new term Transinterpreter, a
union of a translator and an interpreter. **silence**
82

I believe that the technology revolution in our profession will also drive both
arms of this one body to work in unison and in a couple of decades there will
be no differentiation as to the role of the translator or the role of the interpreter
but rather, both roles will complement each other in a professional called the
TRANSINTERPRETER. I believe that in the 21st Century translators will need
to also have some of the skills reserved for interpreters and interpreters will
have to develop some of the skills normally associated with translators

83

Transinterpreters are also being called to work as translators and interpreters
in real time in all sort of chatting environments.
84

Transinterpreters now not only participate in multilingual webcasts but
additionally those webcasts may be sharing documents among attendees
and several of the interpreters might be be requested to interpret the content
of documents that are being shared.

85

There is also a whole new segment of interpreting that is dedicated to instant
interpreting of written texts over the internet, for example emails, so the
person calls you, shares their screen, shows you the email and you read it to
them in the target language; just as you would for example complete a sight
translation of a patient consent during an interpreting in a hospital.

86

Voice recognition technologies are becoming more sophisticated and able of
receiving voice messages in a source language, transferring it to text
automatically, performing some machine translation to the target language,
and returning that text to voice. Voice to text to voice and text to voice to text
87

The other huge trend that I see coming is that machine translation paired with
voice recognition technologies edited by a transinterpreter.
88

Even the United Nations is sponsoring simultaneous translation apps for
adobe connect. This just to show you that these technologies are very close
to becoming mainstream
89

Software such as Dragon naturally speaking are changing how we work
because many translators are no longer typing their translations but
interpreting them and speaking them out to the computer and then editing
them in writing. This is the perfect example of voice to text technologies that
are becoming very common in our world.
90

There is a panel discussion on leveraging voice recognition technology for
greater efﬁciency. It may be interesting to check it out.
91

Finally, Katherine Allen and Barry Olsen had a session today on the
emergence of hybrid communication models. I would recommend that you
listen to that session if you did not already because they express in a very
articulate way some of the points that I have been making for several years.

92

Let me challenge you to do some research once this chat is over. Google
globalization and digitalization and educate yourself on these trends.
95

96
In the translation and interpreting industry, the main
drivers of today are availability and speed of
access, followed by cost and volume. Consistency
and quality are still important but not as high in the
table of needs as they used to be 10 years ago.

97
There is a shift in the balance of powers in terms of
•  A shift in the number and type of Internet
users and web markets.
•  A shift in the number and type of Non-native
speakers throughout the world.

98
•  A shift in the amount of Investments in the
language industry.
•  Changes and regulations in industries such as
healthcare and legal.
•  Expansion of military industry and defense
needs in multiple languages
•  New needs in the world, such as Refugees
and speakers of non-native languages

101
The new Transinterpreter in the 21st century will
probably work as a trans creator or a
localization or will be working in website
translation, which is a totally different animal
than a paper translation, or will be asked to
work as a microsite creator or might be
working in translation reviews or post editing
of machine translation

102
The new transinterpreter will see the merging of text
and speech, will have to be both translator and
interpreter in real time live chat rooms and
similar environments, will be working on the
translation of live captioning and sight
translation under the a camera, or will be
expected to meet quick turnover of email
content or traverse the world of multilingual
subtitling of short segments that are subject to
time constraints.

103
Historically speaking, translators and interpreters
are loners. This is true no more. Collaboration
is the new term. We are now part of a very
active team of collaborators in a highly
interactive relationship.

104
There are many different platforms for collaboration,
which enable teams to work to get the right
people in real time with no concern for
geography, in a virtual or physical space, with
the right information and in the right context to
make critical decisions. In our interconnected
world that speaks and writes in hundreds of
different languages, translators and
interpreters are pivotal to the efforts of these
collaboration efforts.

105
The other big development to keep your eye on are
the different platforms for collaboration, which
enable teams to work together and are central
to how organizations will reap value. Platforms
of collaboration are all about getting the right
people at the right time - real time or
asynchronous - in the right place - virtual or
physical - with the right information and in the
right context to make critical decisions. Now
then, if we are talking about an interconnected
world that speaks and writes in hundreds of
different languages, translators and
interpreters become pivotal to the efforts of

In today’s language services industry, we, the translators and interpreters, are
but one phase of the entire process. We know our work is the one vital
portion, but this graph shows that we may be just one of a dozen people who
participate in the process in the 21st Century.
.
107

Moreover, if we look at the different tasks involved, where each of the above
circles may involve one or more individuals, you can clearly see that there is a
conglomerate of people in today’s translation process that require
collaboration and coordination.
108

. And the interpreting cycle is not that different because you have scheduling
issues and attendance issues, and transportation and logistics, conﬁdentiality
and multiple actors to deal with.
.

109

Today, language service providers and corporations use a translation
management server or a translation workbench to manage their translation
workﬂow and to ensure that the adequate resources, terminology and
translation memories are used, that the handover of work from user to user is
completed quickly and without mistakes introduced by the process itself.

110

There are several innovative technologies now made available to interpreters
to provide relatively easy access to larger global market by offering
interpreters a platform to work remotely from their homes.
111

There are several market disruptors and just as an example, one is Duolingo.
This graphic shows the 28 different language pair combinations that they are
currently offering at any given time. This goes to the heart of why technology
in the form of video, phone and web-based technologies is growing at an
exponential pace. It is really impossible in terms of the economics for any
organization to have 28 or more interpreters in different language pair
combinations available to respond immediately to the growing multilingual
demands placed on any organization.
112

Audiovisual Translation or Subtitling requires skills in a variety of registers and
styles and the market is growing at very fast rates.
113

Subtitling is one of the voice-to-text options that has made transinterpreting
popular in communities that do not speak a dominant languages. Many of the
ﬁlms that come out of Hollywood are seen in other countries with subtitles for
non-English speakers.
114

Finally, translating audiovisual material for voiceover and dubbing pose other
challenges to the transinterpreter but the demand is on the rise.
115

I have a difﬁcult paragraph that I have been submitting every year to Google
translate since they appeared on the scene. This year, it translated it about
70% as good as my original human translation 5 years ago. That is how good
it has become.
119

The Ofﬁce of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic
Council of the United States have stated that one of the Grand Challenges of
the 21st Century is to ﬁnd an automatic, highly accurate and real time
translation between the major languages of the world to greatly lower the
barriers to international commerce and collaboration.
120

To this purpose, the White House directly challenged the Translation Industry
to innovate, a challenge that comes with cash for research as an incentive.

121

The stimulus package of the White House then included money for
innovations in the translation industry. I wanted to bring this to your attention
because that push for machine translation is already six years old and it has
been compounded with the other huge investments that IT and tech
companies such as Google, IBM, Apple and other giants have been making in
these technologies.
122

123
Automated translation is the translation of text by a computer, with no
human involvement. Remember that quality is no longer as important
as it used to be. For many users, it is “acceptable” if they can get the
general idea about the content.

Machine Translation technology has been improved over time to produce
results of acceptable quality.
124

We have gone from paper to word management like MS word to CAT tools
like dsl to machine translation as Moses and now we must become proﬁcient
at post editing.

126
Post-editing, or hybrid translation, is a combination of manpower and
machine output and is increasingly popular – translators proofread and
edit automated translation results.

Post editing machine translation is one of the next steps that I would
recommend you look into very close as part of your learning curve because in
my opinion this is where most of the work will be for translators in the coming
decades
127

Light post‐editing involves taking the raw MT output and performing as few
modiﬁcations as possible to the text in order to make the translation
understandable, factually accurate, and grammatically correct..
128

Full post‐editing is a slower and more in‐depth pass to produce absolutely
accurate translations that consistently use correct and approved terminology.
The expectation is high: full post‐edited content that must be equal to human
translation in all aspects.
129

One of the sessions today is entitled the beauty of machine translation. Just
to bring that to your attention.

130

*silence* Just as translation has undergone these huge transformations, the
delivery systems of interpreting services have also turned upside down in the
last few decades.
131

Lets then talk about Interpreters of the 21st Century. Keep in mind what we
talked about the transinterpreter, this is, if you are a translator do not simply
discard this section because you are not an interpreter at present. You might
soon ﬁnd yourself in need of these skills.
132

Today, Interpreters work in person, over the phone, remotely by video, or
using web based technologies. I believe that Face to Face interpreting will
progressively be replaced by remote interpreting except for some few niches
like surgeries, complex litigation or high stake political meetings, and other
very speciﬁc and sporadic assignments. Most interpreting will be done over
the phone, or using computer video or the web.

Over the phone interpreting is now being used by most large hospitals, social
service and government agencies, major retailers, the ﬁnancial sector and
even the courts. To become a phone interpreter you need special skills to
work without the visual cues of a face to face encounter and you need to
learn to deal with a large amount of interferences that do not exist in the
personal encounter.

Video remote interpreting is quickly becoming one of the tools of choice of
corporations and large organizations. Additionally, the availability of video
remote interpreting using mobile technologies has expanded this service to
the common citizen all over the world. Again, special skills are required to
handle the static video transmission along with a high understanding of
technology to be able to solve the many technical issues that may arise
during each call.

Web-based interpreting is also gaining ground as one of the futuristic options
for large corporations and government agencies, and here Transinterpreters
will be the norm.

There are basically two modalities of interpreting. Consecutive and
Simultaneous.

David Frankel of ZipDX talked about bringing simultaneous interpreting to
virtual meetings and the unique requirements of a virtual or remote
multilingual interaction with technology as the cornerstone to successful
communication. David states that making the magic of simultaneous
interpreting available to the much broader international audience through
teleconferencing and videoconferencing and webcasts can avoid the time
and expense of travel and the need for specialized equipment.
138

And recently a new modality has emerged, called Sim-Consec. Ester Navarro
and others have developed and are actively teaching it. It is a combination of
simultaneous and consecutive with the use of portable technology and it is
quickly becoming the technique of choice in many settings, including the
courts.
139

We need not only learn about the technology but more important than that,
we need to practice with it to acquire the skill needed to work with the
technology. That takes time and money and we need to be ready and
available to make that investment. Technology is no longer a option, it is a
requirement of the Digital Age, at least in the world of business.

143

I also believe that learning technology is equivalent to learning another
language. Technology in itself is a whole separate language that we need to
learn in order to perform in the digital age. Just like another language, you
need to study it and you need to practice it to be able to master it.
144

Please make sure you understand the need to be well versed in CAT tools and
Translation memories.
145

Joana Gough of the University of Surrey is researching the way translators
work on the 21st Century as part of her research for PhD. She has already
published some preliminary results which I believe you might be interested in
because it is a quick overview of what the translation industry is looking
today, from the point of view of the translators.
146

Just to give you an example of what is going on in technology. A client portal
is an electronic gateway to a collection of digital ﬁles, services, and
information, accessible over the Internet through a web browser. In today’s
world, translation and interpreting assignments are being assigned and
managed via client access portals instead of phone calls or emails or the
traditional means of communication.
147

Many interpreters are even way behind translators in the need to improve
their skills in terms of technology. Interpreters need to become highly
comfortable with computers, software, and all the technology tools of today.
This is becoming ever more important and interpreters who don’t do so will
be left behind, regardless of their proﬁciency as linguists.
148

And translators who think they do not need to know how to manage verbal
interactions are, as we have seen, going to have a hard time unless they
come to terms with the new requirements of the future of the profession.
149

150
In the past 50 years, business in general have undergone huge
technological changes and changes in the associated processes. Many
other professions, such as medicine and journalism as well as the music
industry, to name just the same, are nothing similar to what they were 30
years ago. Translation and interpreting were insulated during decades of
changes but now we must play catch up.

For example, there are so many webmail providers out there that you should
learn which provider is the best for your speciﬁc region of the world.
Wikipedia has a very interesting comparison of webmail providers if you want
to visit that page.
151

152
Video chats and video conferencing will take over
the workplace and social interaction. The days
when we had to be physically present somewhere
are long gone. Transinterpreters who can be
interpreters but also translate on the spot
documents or short texts are on the rise.

153
Virtual classrooms allow web conferencing in real-
time and share all kinds of resources, such as
slides, documents, electronic whiteboards, shared
applications or even whole desktops live polls,
questions, surveys, break-out sessions and record-
keeping. All of this in multiple languages across
continents.

I am now going to go quickly over some of the topics you should be familiar
with or become proﬁcient.
154

More and more we are seeing presentations in PowerPoint sent for
translation, so this is a program that you should become really familiar with.
161

Excel is another program that is now starting to appear more and more as
source text for translation because strings can easily be copied to excel
documents. You should be at least familiar on how excel works.
162

Most translators are using their software at less than 10% of what they could.
You should spend some time learning all the fantastic tricks your Word
Processor can do for you.

163

*silence* The idea behind crowdsourcing is that ‘the many’ are smarter and
make better choices than ‘the few’, and that the ‘crowd’ has a huge potential
for which they often ﬁnd no outlet. In previous years
165

Crowd-assisted translation refers to employing large numbers of bilingual
human translators who collaborate via social media.
CROWD sourcing takes tasks traditionally performed by a contractor and
outsources it to an undeﬁned, generally large group of people or community
in the form of an open call.

166

171
We need to adapt to encounters that are not face to
face but remote, we need to learn to manage the
technologies of this new brave century to enhance
our professional knowledge, and use them for the
appropriate delivery of our services. Just Facebook
has over 750 million users and Tweeter over 150
million users speaking many languages.

172
•  Social media and virtual means of
communication are becoming increasingly
preferred in business. All those users might
need to communicate in many other languages
than their own. We need to understand social
media and social networks, because these are
growing at a rate of 35% in the business
environment, while email is decreasing at a rate
of 8%.

173
Gaming started to become a truly social experience
during 2010. The trend is set to become a dominant
one in the coming years and translation of gaming
content is growing every day.

174
Social commerce is people coming together to
beneﬁt from massive bulk-buying agreements, even
though they have never met. You guessed it,
interactions will progressively require
communication in multiple languages.

175
The media has been totally transformed from one-
way communicators like magazines, newspapers,
radio, TV or even the movies to the SHARING of
content in two-way interactions with the inclusion
of text and audio and images and animation. You
not only “watch” or “listen” or “read” the news, you
can blog with the journalists, receive tweeters,
follow live streams, upload videos and content of
your own. Again, in multiple languages
simultaneously...

*silence* As we noted earlier, Servicing 20th century clients is totally different
than servicing 21st century clients. Many of the new and even old clients do
not want a totally professional translation and they simply want the gist and in
many occasions good quality has become optional and it all depends on
price.
176

What then are the skills that you need to service 21st century clients who want
speed and price over quality? That is what you have to decide. For some it
will be to penetrate the post editing market. For others it will be to specialize
to service very particular industries that still need high quality work. For
others it may be to search for new opportunities in industries that did not
exist before. Others may want to totally change their business approach and
try new models of operation.
177

So remember you need to decide what your niche market will be and what
your special characteristic will be. What is it that you offer clients that no one
else is offering? Why should clients go with you and not with someone else.
Why should they pay you when they can get it cheaper? Those are the
questions you need to start answering seriously,
178

My ﬁnal conclusion is that translation and interpreting has gone from being a
sophisticated intellectual profession, which it was 30 years ago, to a language
services industry of knowledgeable linguists using state of the art technology.
Once all of us make peace with this fundamental change in the nature and
scope of the profession, we will be able to move again into a position of
strength to decide how to build a future for the profession.

181

The changes present us with both new challenges and new opportunities.
Speed, cost and volume are most often cited. But it is much more than that.
For the practitioners they mean working smarter and being open to change,
adapting to new changing roles, learning new skills and mastering new tools.
But the basics do not change. You are still required to be the best linguist, to
render your best work, to perform within the highest ethical parameters.
182

Technology does not sit and wait for one profession or another to approve of
it existence. It just goes forward. The faster that the old professions adapt to
the new technologies, the faster they embrace them and start beneﬁting from
its advantages, the further that they will be able to start inﬂuencing their own
evolution and development. Otherwise, we will be simple spectators. It is
not a matter of how translators and interpreters react to these changes but
rather how fast we adapt to them so we can start steering the wheel of our
destiny.
183

What will the face of Translation and Interpreting be in the future? For
millennia, living and breathing translators or interpreters have been the
embodiment of unparalleled linguistic skills, specialized training, professional
conduct and a passion for their work. Maybe it is true that machines will not
replace translators and interpreters. But certainly other translators and
interpreters using state of the art technology will replace them. You want to be
in this group. Become tech savvy. Learn the new skills needed for the 21st
century.

184

You
will
also
receive
a
pdf
of
this
presenta5on
with
the
materials
linked
from
the

ProZ
session
page

187

So, we have arrived at the end of this presentation.

In
a
few
minutes
we
will
start
the
live
por5on
of
Ques5ons
and
Answers.

So
please
start
by
telling
me,
what
is
the
most
important
take
away
concept
you
have

learned
today?

The future is here. Are you ready to remain competitive?

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