I recently had the opportunity to attend a workshop about “The ins and outs of telephone interpreting” presented by Michelle Dieter and hosted by the Chartered Institute of Linguists (the professional body I am part of). This comprehensive session provided a deep dive into the intricacies of telephone interpreting (TI), offering practical advice for both new and experienced interpreters.

Introduction to Telephone Interpreting

The webinar started with an introduction to telephone interpreting, including some basic information, such as what it is and how it works.

Telephone interpreting is like real-time interpreting, but rather than interpreting face-to-face, telephone interpreting relies only on audio communication. The idea is to increase flexibility and use a limited number of interpreters for a broader range of tasks regardless of their location.

Originally, telephone interpreting was done via a phone, which is why the name is as it is. However, most telephone interpreting is now done through the Internet using environments such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other web-based calling software.

During the COVID pandemic, there was a dramatic upswing in the use of telephone interpreting as other remote services became a necessity. Many interpreters who had previously spent long hours travelling and communicating in person transitioned to remote work to maintain a steady income and continue their work.

Michelle, a public service interpreter, switched to telephone interpreting before COVID but found that during the pandemic, it became a significant source of her income, which she has since continued. Michelle specialises in medical, legal and emergency service interpreting.  

Technical Requirements

The barrier to get into telephone interpreting can be high. There are several components required:

Optimal setup

While an optimal setup also helps in-person interpreting, it is necessary for telephone interpreting, and extra components are not traditionally needed. These include a high-quality headset with a built-in microphone, which helps not only you understand your clients better but also your clients understand you better. You also need a fast and reliable internet connection to avoid disruptions in connectivity.

Additionally, like in more traditional methods of interpreting, you need easy access to glossaries and dictionaries. With telephone interpreting (usually done online), you can use other digital resources to reference for terminology, so those should be prepared in advance to make it easy and convenient to access.

Additionally, like with traditional interpreting, you need an effective note-taking process, whether pen and paper or digital. This helps to maintain accuracy during complex or lengthy sessions.

Finally, ergonomics and comfort are also a high priority. For traditional interpreting, the client or employer often provides these things. For freelancers or those who work remotely, adjustable chairs, standing desks, and regular breaks are important for your mental and physical health. The more comfortable you are, the more likely you are to be able to interpret for longer sessions.

Telephone Interpreting Agencies

Telephone interpreting agencies are the go-between between the end client and the interpreter. Usually, interpreters work with and get jobs through them, either as employees or freelancers.

Various telephone interpreting agencies use a wide range of systems. These include app-based interfaces and browser-based platforms, both of which allow interpreters to log in and accept assignments. Currently, app-based interfaces are more robust and efficient and do not require interpreters to remain connected or logged in like browser-based platforms.

Michelle also shared her experience in working with several UK agencies with specific examples. Language Line offers a lot of work and training but requires interpreters to accept a wide range of assignments, including medical, insurance and legal. Prestige provides a good app but has limited work opportunities for certain language pairs. Word 360 she found frustrating due to inconsistent call allocation. Silent Sounds and 24-7 Language Services in her experience only had minimal workloads, so she did not recommend them unless they are good for your specific language pairs.

Skills for Successful Telephone Interpreting

Michelle highlighted core skills, customer service, and adaptability as necessities for telephone interpreting.

Among the core skills she listed are accurate listening and retention, which are important for remembering and conveying information. Clear and confident verbal expression in both working languages went hand in hand with those. Finally, background knowledge, especially of vocabulary and its usage, is important in the fields relevant to an interpreter’s situation (e.g., medical, legal, etc.).

As interpreting involves interacting with people, it is important to be able to manage challenging or emotional scenarios professionally. For example, you may have to tell someone they are dying in medical situations. You need to remain professional but understanding without letting your personal thoughts or emotions affect your ability to interpret.

Ethics and practical considerations

Interpreters follow a code of ethics. Part of this includes, at the beginning of the call, emphasising their confidentiality, impartiality and inability to provide advice, only to interpret. This effectively sets a clear boundary and prevents misunderstandings.

While interpreting typically involves taking what one person says and repeating it in the other language, there are times when an interpreter needs to “intervene”. This means the interpreter needs to request or give more information than was provided. This could include explaining cultural or linguistic nuances, clarifying ambiguous phrases or terms, or asking the speaker to use shorter sentences for improved accuracy.

Intervention should also be used when the interpreter does not fully understand or comprehend what someone has just said. Rather than guessing, which can lead to errors with serious consequences in some situations, it is infinitely better to intervene multiple times until all parties are on the same page.

Challenges of Telephone Interpreting

One of the biggest challenges of telephone interpreting is that there are no visual cues; telephone interpreters cannot use facial expressions or body language to help inform them about the situation. Instead, only audio cues, such as tone and context, are available, which makes it more difficult to provide emotional or nuanced communication.

Because of the equipment needed (as mentioned earlier), failure or faults can cause serious issues, such as poor audio quality. Struggling through with poor quality increases the mental energy an interpreter uses to complete an assignment, meaning they will not be able to work as long or on as many assignments as they could with better audio quality.

As is the nature of interpreting, unpredictable situations can always arise. However, unlike face-to-face interpreting, where interpreters often have a lot of time to prepare and are given a briefing of what the interpreting session will be about, telephone interpreters often do not have much preparation time or information. This means they get a lot of this information during the call itself.

Advantages of Telephone Interpreting

Challenges aside, there are some advantages. There is a much higher degree of flexibility and even remote work, reducing travel time and costs. You can also combine telephone interpreting with other remote or freelance work, such as translation, teaching or even face-to-face interpreting.

Additionally, if set up correctly beforehand, telephone interpreters also have more resources than face-to-face interpreting, including online dictionaries and termbases. This can increase precision and accuracy without disrupting the conversation to take breaks.

Disadvantages of Telephone Interpreting

Compared with face-to-face interpreting, the costs are lower, so pay is also lower for telephone interpreting. The result is that many telephone interpreters are unable to work as telephone interpreters full time, instead combining this work with others (as mentioned above).

There is also often a lack of context. The assignment might say, “Woman from Brazil complaining of headaches visiting her GP,” but many completely unrelated things could cause those headaches, making any kind of (limited) preparation nearly impossible. Many specifics must be gathered during the session, which is extra work for the interpreter.

Finally, listening to audio all day can be more draining than face-to-face interpreting.

Michelle’s Tips for Success

Michelle had some tips for success for anyone considering telephone interpreting.

For pre-scheduled calls, the interpreter should research terminology and become familiar with the context of the appointment. Use the brief to focus your preparation on things that will most likely appear during the session. If you are also less knowledgeable or familiar with the subject in one of your working languages, build your vocabulary as well.

Another tip was to practice scenarios, especially with people who are willing to assume the clients’ roles. Practice builds confidence and fluency, and role-playing is particularly effective for mastering common scenarios in telephone interpreting.

Managing your stress and emotions when working as a telephone interpreter is also paramount. Self-care, including decompression rituals and routines, is important after difficult calls. This can include walking, listening to music, meditation, etc.

Conclusion

Michelle ended the webinar by re-emphasising the challenging nature, advantages, and flexibility of telephone interpreting, especially as a supplement to face-to-face interpreting and translation work. She again recommended honing skills, advocating for fair pay, and setting clear boundaries, all of which will help interpreters succeed in this growing and dynamic field.  

How does this help a freelance translator?

I studied Translation and Interpreting during my Master’s Degree, so most of this information was not new. However, I finished my degree in 2018 and decided then that I would not go into interpreting for several reasons.

The first was that I found it to be extremely draining. I wanted a job that offered me the flexibility, and that was remote. At the time, telephone interpreting was not as widespread as it is today, and interpreters often needed to go to a call centre and work from there, which was not what I wanted.

Secondly, people often do not understand how many processes are going on in an interpreter’s mind simultaneously (listening, processing the information, figuring out the translation, etc.). As a result, they further complicate things by talking over each other. I found this incredibly draining, and I did not think I could do this kind of work full-time.

Finally, telephone interpreting was still in the era of telephones. An end client called the agency and was transferred to the interpreter. Then, the two parties, who may be in the same room or separate locations, spoke over the phone. As someone who strongly dislikes interacting with disembodied voices, this was not something that appealed to me in the slightest.

Looking back six years later, the field seems to have changed a lot. However, I still do not think I would be a good fit for it. I still do not like interacting with disembodied voices and prefer a video call over a traditional one. I have also not practised my note-taking and memory skills related to interpreting since I finished my studies, so I would need to refresh many of those before I would be a viable candidate for interpreting assignments.

However, from an outside view, I think telephone interpreting is more attractive than when I studied interpreting. For new linguists especially, it seems like it would be an excellent component of a work portfolio if you had the correct training and personality/work ethic for this kind of work. With human translation under threat from machine translation and artificial intelligence, having something much more robust and resistant to those advances could only be a benefit.