Language Technology and Solutions to Help Bring People Together

As companies try to adapt to the new reality of remote working, here is what one of them did to bring everyone together. They wanted to find a way to simultaneously communicate to all their Canadian employees in both official languages (French and English) on a live video call.

They reached out to their language services provider to assist them. More on this later.

Normally, a video call alone is a technical challenge. Getting everyone on the call, on time, with audio and video functioning, is often regarded as a miracle of communication technology. That’s because all the participants need to have the right hardware with speakers and a microphone, download, install and run software, have access to a stable internet connection, and get on the conference bridge in time!

Imagine what happens when your business leader within the organization speaks and no one understands what is being said because of a faulty connection. Now, think for a minute about the language duality of Canadian business … where some employees don’t speak English and others don’t speak French. How do you present your message without isolating a group? The answer is not so obvious. Often, companies with a French culture, will record a call then transcribe it for the English-speaking employees, or vice versa. This takes time, resources, and can be expensive to produce. Most importantly, though, how do the employees feel? I bet they feel left out, isolated, and unimportant. 

Luckily, in this case, employees are viewed as partners in the business and as being critical to the success of the organization. So, what happened? Well, the client reached out to its language services provider to see what could be done.

The stakes were high. The company’s President was going to address the entire Canadian workforce. It had to work. Failure was not an option. The answer came quickly: There is a service called simultaneous remote interpreting (SRI), which we can provide for the video conference. As the name suggests, this is a modality of simultaneous interpreting in which the interpreter is not onsite, but in a remote location. The interpreter receives an audiovisual feed of the event and broadcasts the interpreting to event participants in multiple locations.

This was new to the client and its employees. But with reassurance and technical tests to ensure all components were in place, stakeholders across Canada and the United States took a leap of faith and went ahead with the event with simultaneous remote French interpreting.

Using their Facebook Workplace intranet tool, attendees could securely tap into the live audio and video feed, while French speakers could listen to the interpreter on the phone while watching the English broadcast on their device. This solution gave them an immediate sense of importance, of value, having been set apart in the past. Employee engagement and commitment were instantly solidified. Sentimental feedback soon came in. Awesome! Thank you for the interpreting! Wow! It went winningly!

It’s fun to win one for the team, isn’t it? We think so too. In case you didn’t guess yet, we are the provider in question. Megalexis. When customers need help, we are there for them. That is our culture. As for the customer, you guessed it, we can’t tell you. That’s because our word is our bond. Confidentiality is assured. Even in trying times.

Do you wish your current provider did the same for you? If they can’t or won’t, then we are here for you.

 

Request your SRI service proposal now!

 

Count on us a million times; Megalexis.