Change is Coming Whether We Want It or Not: Interpreting and Technology

Imagine the following scenario: An Arabic-speaking patient and her nurse are waiting for the interpreter to arrive to help with complicated post-surgery discharge instructions. The interpreter is held up and the nurse is called to tend to another patient. Even though she knows it is against hospital policy, she takes out her smart phone, taps on the instant interpreting app and reads the discharge instructions into the speaker. After a few moments, voice recognition software begins to speak in Arabic, relaying the instructions after having been machine translated by the app. When the interpreter arrives, the patient has already been discharged and the nurse is busy with another patient.

Does this scenario concern you? Excite you with its possibilities? Or a bit of both? Like it or not, our workplaces are being irrevocably changed by the technology transforming our daily life.

If you are interested in not only learning how technology is impacting the interpreting workplace, but in contributing to what our profession can do to shape its impact, don't miss the 3^rd North American Summit on Interpreting on June 15-16, 2012, in Monterey, California.

Highly-acclaimed technology thought leader Scott Klososky will kick off the Summit with his keynote plenary: The Digital Revolution and Multilingual Communications – A New Paradigm. His speech will be followed by a hands-on panel exploring case studies on Integrating New Technologies into the Interpreting Workplace. Speakers David Frankel, the CEO of ZipDix, Cristiano Mazzei, the Director of Translation and Interpreting at Century College, and Melinda Paras, Director of Paras and Associates and founder of the Health Care Interpreting Network (HCIN), will share examples of ground-breaking uses of technology in remote interpreting and e-participation in multilingual meetings, online training models, and networking public hospitals via video medical interpreting. Finally, Becca Bryant, Technology Developer at Williams Sound, will moderate the Professional Identity Workgroup Session on Technology, Toward a Working Technology Partnership for the Interpreting Profession. Summit attendees will have the chance to share their own vision for best practices for the proper use of technology in the interpreting field.

Complete details can be found at www.interpretamerica.net/summit. Early bird rates, student and teacher discounts, and poster presentation submissions all still apply! Register now!