Our Analysts' Insights

The topic of automation has taken the interpreting industry by storm. On the one hand, enthusiasts believe in artificial intelligence as a way to broaden language access at an affordable cost. On the other hand, skeptics worry about all the things that could go wrong in the implementation. But where does it all settle when it comes to organization-level implementations?

The rising frequency of discussions about AI has led to much unease among interpreting service providers about the impact of automated solutions on language access and on what that means to the future of their profession. In this blog, we explore the concept of meaningful language access, why automated interpreting struggles with that concept, and how it relates to deciding and defining the role of the interpreter.

Some people feel that using artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret human speech is a curse because individuals using the service could suffer harm due to mistranslations or because interpreters might lose their livelihood. Others embrace AI for all the possibilities it creates, first and foremost the ability to offer language access on a much greater scale and at a reduced cost. So which camp is right? Like so many techno-ethical questions, there is no right or wrong. It really depends on th...