Online Sound Simplified: solutions for online sound issues

This workshop invites participants to reflect on our professional reality, ie, that we can’t interpret what we don’t hear. This means that when it comes to interpreting, hearing what’s said is the base of the pyramid. Step one. A precondition. A sine qua non. 

Yet here we are, years later, now using online platforms to try and perform a very complex activity (interpreting from one language to another in real time), and facing the same essential conundrum: we can’t hear what’s being said. Or can we? Sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t? Like, we hear most of it and fill in the blanks, or stop interpreting, or don’t know what to do, or realize it too late. 

In this workshop, the trainer will help participants strategize and troubleshoot around all things online sound by:

·       Having them listen to different types of sound and explore what they personally like and dislike/can and can’t work with;

·       Helping them understand which types of devices produce which types of sound;

·       Teaching them to identify, diagnose and troubleshoot sound problems, and devising strategies for preventing bad sound in the first place;

·       Sharing ways to effectively communicate with clients, techs and colleagues about sound;

·       Reviewing their own practices regarding the sound they themselves are producing online;

·       Discussing what to do in the moment when they are interpreting and the sound is just not great.

Most of the workshop will be grounded in the private market, when working with direct clients via Zoom, but much of what will be discussed, if cleverly adapted, can also be useful in institutional settings, for agency clients, or when working via other interpreting-enabled online platforms.