5G and Epidemic Making RSI (Remote Simultaneous Interpreting) Prosperous
At the beginning of 2020, a sudden epidemic has disrupted all walks of life. The offline real economy has been hit hard, and online industries such as games and online education have won a rare opportunity for development. Today, let's talk about the challenges and opportunities that the epidemic has brought to the translation industry.Translation is an industry that spans both online and offline. Traditionally, most of the interpreting takes place offline and most of the translation takes place online. Is it really the case with interpretation today?
In February 2020, according to a survey, the number of offline meetings was zero, which is not good news for interpreters or translation companies. Then people began to use Zoom, Tencent conference, Skype and other products for teleconference, so the interpreter's work scenes shifted from offline to online as well. In a traditional conference interpretation scenario, the meeting organizer or LSP (language service provider) has preferred offline interpreting rather than online for two considerations: 1. Offline interpreting is more convenient for the communication between interpreters and clients to deal with unexpected changes; 2. Clients worry about the delay and sound issues caused by network or product instability that will affect the meeting process.
It must be acknowledged that both of the two issues may occur during teleconference. But according to statistics, the two problems have not affected the number of online meetings, which roughly quintupled from February to May this year and are almost on par with the meeting number of November and December last year, which were unaffected by the outbreak.
The advantage of online interpretation is that it eliminates the high cost of renting equipment and operating costs. Apart from that, the limits of space will be broken. For clients, it is possible to hold multiple meetings at the same time, regardless of venue constraints, and to connect with a larger audience. For interpreters, the traditional interpreting booth is limited to two people working together, while online interpretation allows multiple interpreters to work in turns.
When talking about transformation and survival under epidemic, many people immediately think of JD, one of the top 2 e-commercegiants in China. During 2008 when SARS broke out, all the stores of JD were still offline. In order to survive, JD started to sell its products online,which led to its today’s position as China’s second largest e-commerce giant.With further development of 5G, leading to significant delay drop and transmission speed increase, this outbreak may be an opportunity for remote simultaneous interpreting to grow and thrive, providing people the same experience as they got from the traditional simultaneous interpreting meeting.
Babel Tower has been in talks with Akkadu, a leading remote simultaneous communication platform for cooperation opportunities. since June 2020, Akkadu has started to provide remote simultaneous interpreting services to Babel Tower's clients. Akkadu is a remote SI solution provider. Its founder Alvaro Montoya is a Spaniard who earned an MBA degree from Tsinghua University. The company has received a seed round investment of RMB 1 million from Chi StarVenture Capital one year after its establishment. Akkadu has provided comprehensive remote SI solutions to universities, businesses, institutions and conferences of all kinds.
（Please refer to Akkadu's official website for detailed cooperation cases）
（Kai-fu Lee speaks at Audi MQ Event）
(Akkadu is an online remote simultaneous interpreting product. Listeners do not need to install any app. They can enjoy offline simultaneous delivery experience by scanning the QR code on the mobile phone with their headset.）
