Teaching Conference Interpreting Online: Methods, Modes, Settings and Technologies

With the lasting pandemic, a significant number of international and local conferences as well as interpreting classes have been moved online. This has changed conference interpreting industry and interpreting education significantly. Interpreting trainers who are usually interpreting practitioner themselves now faces two urgent challenges: 1) to teach students interpreting skills remotely by using
various teaching technologies and platforms; 2) to learn and use the necessary technologies for remote interpreting via different conference organization platforms. The paper demonstrates the know-how, advantages and disadvantages of different conference interpreting and interpreting teaching platforms as well as relevant technologies involved. Many of these are applicable to both interpreting and foreign language online teaching that involves listening and speaking. Each specific platform and relevant technologies can be used in distinctive ways serving different pedagogical purposes and accommodating various course designs. By comparing and matching, this paper discusses teaching methods to be used for different modes of interpreting (simultaneous, and consecutive) and more specifically methods that can be used under different settings of online interpreting classroom (mock conference, individual training, peer feedback and group discussions). It further discusses how the technologies could be applied to interpreting online assessment and the requirements and equipment needed for the online class setup. The paper concluded by summarizing the possible scenarios of online conference interpreting classrooms and the teaching methods required. Each of these scenarios can be further spin off into in-class online activities serving different components of language teaching. Future directions see the incorporation interpreting working and teaching platforms and technologies which will serve both education and conference industry better. This combination will also get students more familiarized with the remote interpreting technologies that they will use in the job market. Recommendations are made on easy to use online activities in both interpreting and language classes.