Interpreting on Zoom: missing functions and what’s still needed

Zoom is currently the most well-known online conferencing platform on the market. It offers very advanced features for both monolingual and multilingual events, but it is still far from achieving perfection.

With the accelerated process of digitalisation we are experiencing these days, increasingly sophisticated processes are emerging when it comes to scheduling online meetings and seminars. This phenomenon means that more and more users are venturing to use the more advanced features of programmes, among which Zoom stands out.

But are Zoom's features really that advanced as we think? Can we customise our events with the features we want? Or will we encounter unexpected limitations?

1. Remote simultaneous interpreting in Breakout Rooms on Zoom

Among its many features, Zoom allows you to create an event with a specific number of attendees and divide them in smaller groups by sending them to Breakout Rooms. For example, let's say that you create a meeting with 12 attendees in which you all discuss a project you want to start in 3 months.

In the meeting, there are 4 attendees from each of your company's departments. Once everything has been discussed, you want to divide the meeting into smaller groups so that the members of each department can talk about their own strategy.

Zoom offers the possibility to do exactly that. However, if your company has workers of different nationalities who do not speak the same language, you will need the services of an interpreter (or oral translator). This is where Zoom's functions are limited, as the platform does not offer the possibility to integrate interpreting in Breakout Rooms.

The remote simultaneous interpreting function (or remote simultaneous translation) CANNOT be enabled in these small rooms, only in the main room or session. Here we encounter our first limitation that must be considered if you want to organise a multilingual event on Zoom using “Breakout Rooms.”

2. Number of languages for simultaneous interpreting on Zoom

If you have ever wondered how many languages you can simultaneously interpret your event into, you will find your answer here.

As you probably already know, Zoom has ten predefined languages from and into which you can interpret your event (English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, and Vietnamese).

In previous versions, it was not possible to add a language that was not one of the predefined languages. With the new update, Zoom now allows you to customise your event by adding other languages, such as Arabic, for example.

The only limitation now is that you can only add 5 languages outside of the predefined languages per event. That means you can only add 5 “new” (or non-predefined) languages for each event you want to create. If you want to create an event with interpreting from English into Romanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Slovak, Czech, and Norwegian, you will have to remove one of the languages.

Now then, how many languages can be interpreted at once on Zoom? At the beginning of the programme, Zoom allowed remote simultaneous interpreting into 8 languages at the same time. In other words, you could offer multilingual events in a total of 9 languages at once (including the speaker's language of the event). Nowadays it involves an X number of languages, which is indeed a step forward, but it still limits a large part of the events.

3. Create events with relay simultaneous interpreting

To be able to explain the limitations of this section, I will start by explaining what relay interpretation is.

Unlike traditional simultaneous interpreting, where an interpreter receives the words produced directly by the speaker through their headphones, in relay interpreting the interpreter receives the interpreting performed by one of their colleagues from another language combination.

It seems difficult to understand at first glance, but it really isn't. Imagine you are organising an event with interpreting into English and French. Now, the event lasts 4 hours, but in the last half hour you have a small intervention from a guest speaker who does not speak Spanish but German.

In these cases, you have three options:

1. You try to find two interpreters who work with both Spanish and German and can interpret from these two languages into English and French respectively.
2. You add two more interpreters to the event so that two interpreters translate from Spanish to French and English and two translate from German to French and English.
3. You find an interpreter who works from both Spanish and German into English and when it's the German speaker's turn, you connect the interpreter who translates into French to their English colleague's booth so they can interpret from English to French.

The benefits of working with relay interpretation range from cost reduction to better event organisation, as it eliminates the need to provide technical support for as many interpreters.

Zoom currently does NOT offer the option to connect to a fellow interpreter's sound, but only allows receiving the sound of the speaker in the main room.

4. Adjust the volume for listening to the speaker and the interpreter

If you have already attended a remote multilingual event via Zoom (although there are many other programmes that offer this function), you will surely have noticed that when you enter the interpreting channel you can choose between only listening to the interpreter or listening to the interpreter with the speaker’s voice in the background.

This function is very practical when one understands a bit of the other language and wants to follow the speaker's words at the same time. If you haven't tried this function yet, you might wonder, isn't it annoying to hear both voices at once? Well, it depends. It mainly depends on the volume adjustment.

Zoom has a predefined setting that the participant, that is, the person listening to the speech, cannot modify at will. Therefore, we are forced to listen to the interpretation at a volume of 80% while listening to the main speaker at 20%.

So if you want to listen to the interpreting (or oral translation) in the background, you will have to use another programme that allows you to adjust this setting. If you are not familiar with the different programmes available on the market today, you can also contact a translation and interpreting company specialised in remote simultaneous interpreting to advise you and help you find the solution that best suits your event.

5. Conclusion

As you have read so far in this blog, Zoom is still far from perfect. The truth is that with the massive use of this programme throughout the past year, needs have arisen that probably no one had considered before.

It is often the need formore precise and specific settings that leads us to explore other programmes that offer more functions and, above all, more options for customising our event.

As a regular user of this type of platform, while not perfect, I believe that Zoom remains one of the best programmes we can find in the video conferencing tools market today. After all, nothing is perfect.

Note: If you are new to interpreting on Zoom, this blog may interest you: Interpreting on Zoom