For language service providers, working from home was already relatively common before the pandemic. There were even some companies whose entire workforce worked remotely. With the coronavirus pandemic, most if not all LSPs have now moved to remote work. Some people are concerned that working from home leads to lower productivity. Many LSPs have seen a reduction in how much work they have, so comparing the company’s efficiency or productivity between “then” and “now” might not give a fully accurate picture of the effects of working from home. But since the future of COVID-19 is uncertain, we think it is likely that LSPs will continue to let their employees work from home for a while yet. And, if companies remain productive once business starts picking back up, perhaps more companies will consider going remote permanently.

Since almost everything has to be conducted remotely these days, usage of technology that allows us to communicate remotely has skyrocketed. This trend includes the use of remote interpretation technology, such as phone and video interpretation. These services allow critical information to be shared safely. While this type of interpretation is usually not a client’s first choice (many people naturally prefer in-person interpretation), people will get accustomed to using it. And once people are used to it, it is less likely that they will stop. This is why we think that even when in-person interpretation is safe again, remote interpretation will remain more popular than it was before the pandemic.

This pandemic has revealed the importance of medical interpretation and translation, and also the limitations that many health care providers have in providing these services, especially interpretation. Many hospitals were not set up to allow for crucial remote interpretation services. Once the pandemic hit, this became even less of a priority for many hospitals, which has potentially had drastic effects on the lives of non-English speakers who contract the virus (US News). Now that this issue has come to light, we hope that health care providers will take it seriously and take action to make language access possible, especially during a time like this when many lives are at stake. We think that this awareness could spark reforms that improve health care language access across the country in the long term.

Finally, we believe we might see a difference in what translators and interpreters choose to specialize in. As discussed before, many industries have been hard hit by this pandemic, and as a result companies are choosing to forego translation and interpretation services for the time being. However, some translators and interpreters are in extra high demand, like those who specialize in medical and legal work. Since many people are currently worried about job security, and will likely remain worried about it in the future, we can expect that many linguists will take steps to ensure their job security, including specializing in a domain that will always be needed even during global emergencies.

In times of uncertainty, speculating about the future can help us feel more prepared for whatever is to come. We are not sure whether our predictions will occur, of course. But what we are sure of is that most people who contribute to the language services industry are passionate and hard working, and will always do their best to make communication possible.

The same is true for technology usage in the translation and interpretation industry. Technology was already quite a buzzword for language professionals. Many people have been singing praises of tech such as neural machine translation, remote interpretation tools, etc. Now it is time to optimize this technology to help us share information as accurately and quickly as possible.

Providing translation and interpretation is absolutely vital during the coronavirus pandemic. In normal circumstances, it has been shown that people who don’t speak English well or at all tend to have worse health outcomes after many types of routine procedures. This effect can be even worse when the situation is critical, like when patients potentially have COVID-19. Since interpreters can’t be in the room to interpret for patients, doctors must rely on phones as an interpretation platform. This still poses some difficulties, like connectivity issues, and trouble hearing due to doctors keeping physically distant from patient. This is better than nothing, but certainly can be improved. Just as doctors have a duty to their patients to provide the best care possible, language professionals and technology developers have a duty to optimize their services to support health care workers in these times.

However, any technology that is used for health care purposes must have legally a certain level of security. This is one reason that certain platforms like Zoom can’t be used for remote medical interpretation: they need end-to-end encryption, among other requirements, to ensure patients’ privacy.  According to this Time article, many hospitals are doing their best to transition to providing remote interpretation, but they don’t have the infrastructure. We hope to see more platforms implement stricter security measures, so that health care workers can have more tools available to them.

Machine translation is another tool that, when used properly, can greatly speed up the sharing of important information and significant news about the coronavirus. It can also help researchers and doctors understand medical studies and reports on the coronavirus that have come out of other countries. This is why SDL, a major provider of language services and technology, is offering health science researchers free access to their proprietary machine translation tool. This tool offers translation of over 120 languages, so researchers will have a wealth of information from different sources available to them. Please see this article for more information!

We have outlined a few ways in which translation and interpretation technology is important, but we have just touched the tip of the iceberg. There are many ways that this technology is being used to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and to help those people who are working on the front lines of this pandemic and those who have gotten sick. We are proud to offer remote interpretation services ourselves. We believe that this technology plays a significant role in keeping people healthy and saving people’s lives, and we are grateful to everyone who develops and uses this technology.