AI or not AI - That is the Question!

AI has changed the events and interpreting industry, and until now I have spent most of my time interpreting from the booth. But now we hear more and more about AI solutions that are supposed to reduce costs and be more efficient. During my last assignment at a global team meeting online, it became clear that machine intelligence is not the go-to tool for simultaneous interpreting!

In this particular setting, one participant came from Ireland. For years now, we’ve been familiar with the Irish accent and its particular phrasing. If you have trouble remembering the Irish pronunciation, I recommend you watch this video.

During the online meeting, the Irish participant decided to only use his built-in laptop mic, which made it all the more difficult to understand. However, as we have been interpreting these meetings for years and are already very familiar with the participants and the topics discussed, we were able to compensate for the poor sound quality thanks to our expertise, contextualisation and anticipation (and, in any case of doubt, by checking with the speaker, of course).

These are all qualities artificial intelligence is not capable of. AI interpreting systems, while impressive, are not reliable. They struggle with complex language use, dialects, accents, idioms, slang and names and often fail to capture cultural context -- leading to omissions, misinterpretations and hallucinations. In any case, machine intelligence would not have provided a reliable translation of the team meeting, and communication among the participants would not have been possible.