Employing a sociological lens and and building on data from interviews with twenty-six freelance conference interpreters and two focus groups, this book offers a systematic and comprehensive account of freelance conference interpreters’ experiences working in remote interpreting contexts during the COVID pandemic during which time standard practices were severely disrupted and dismantled. It traces these interpreters’ adaptation to remote interpreting post-pandemic and examines the losses and gains to the profession that have resulted.
The book takes a global view of the conference interpreting profession and the rise of AI in multilingual communication. It provides a reappraised understanding of how conference interpreting has evolved because of new technologies and offers insights into how the profession can survive in the age of artificial intelligence. It argues that the social, emotional, moral, and communicative dimensions of interpreting are essential to sustaining the profession amid the growing sense of insecurity surrounding conference interpreting.
The book will be of interest for scholars in translation and interpreting studies, language technologies, artificial intelligence, and professional conference interpreting.
The book takes a global view of the conference interpreting profession and the rise of AI in multilingual communication. It provides a reappraised understanding of how conference interpreting has evolved because of new technologies and offers insights into how the profession can survive in the age of artificial intelligence.
Introduction,
Chapter 1: Evolving modes of conference interpreting:
Literature, practice, and the research agenda from the prepandemic era to the
present,
Chapter 2: The early pandemic: Disruption of habitus and enablers,
Chapter 3: Mid-pandemic: Gains and losses,
Chapter 4: Resettling into the
booths: Nostalgia and resistance,
Chapter 5: The future of conference
interpreting: A Zone of insecurity.
Ozum Arzik-Erzurumlu is a Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Before joining the University of Illinois, she was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (20222024) and served as Associate and Assistant Professor at Bahçeehir University and Atlas University in Istanbul. Her research has appeared in leading journals, including Translation and Interpreting Studies and Interpreting. Arzik-Erzurumlu is an accredited professional conference interpreter with Turkish (A), English (B), and Spanish (C).
