In today’s world, it’s not rare to see businesses collaborating with international partners. This is where interpreters come in handy to ensure effective communication.
Recently, Thao & Co. had the exciting opportunity to provide interpreting services for game testing sessions with the participation of many gamers, KOLs, and game creators. Here, Thao & Co.’s mission was to bring these discussions from Vietnamese to English for the game development team from international branches.
To facilitate real-time communication, Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) was specifically chosen for this project. With the benefits brought, it also came with certain challenges that every interpreter must face.
With up to 8 or 10 participants per session, it’s possible to have multiple speakers talking at once. This might pose a challenge for interpreters as they can’t interpret everyone simultaneously.
This situation unfolded during our second session. At one point, two speakers got so caught up in the discussion that they forgot about the online interpreters and ended up unintentionally talking over each other.
With a lack of practical experience, such scenarios could be overwhelming and make interpreters miss out on information.
In these Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), it’s important to note that all information is essential to improve the game. So besides a deep understanding of gaming industry, it also required further knowledge specific to this project.
For instance, as this was a game-testing project, terms like GMTool (a tool used to level up players) or NPS (Net Promotion Score) are likely to appear. Without prior research, interpreters could easily be tricked by these terms as their meanings are quite difficult to guess even with context.
This testing event had two discussion sessions per day, each lasting about 3 to 4 hours. And when the interpreters had to focus and interpret continuously for such a long time, it can be quite mentally and physically exhausting. Maintaining focus and accuracy under these conditions requires stamina and proper preparation.
Before sending out any interpreters, Thao & Co. makes sure to equip them with the necessary skills to deal with the unexpected. That’s why instead of rigidly interpreting sentence by sentence, our interpreters adapted by focusing on the overall ideas to quickly paraphrase them. This way, the interpreters would have more time to listen to both speakers.
Even with losses of small details such as filler words or tone, this allowed us to maintain the bigger picture. Otherwise, others’ input would be sacrificed if the interpreter only focuses on one speaker.
What makes an interpreter professional is the necessary preparation before any interpreting event. So despite the advantage of background knowledge in gaming, our interpreters took the initiative to equip themselves specifically for the project through:
Only in this way can Thao & Co. confidently handle any challenges the event threw our way.
However, with years of experience and training, Thao & Co.’s interpreters took on the challenge and developed effective strategies to overcome this problem:
As the project wrapped up, Thao & Co. is proud to be a part of this and successfully fulfill our mission with the trust of our client. Their positive feedback and satisfaction have reaffirmed our commitment to providing professional, high-quality interpreting.
Your success is what drives us forward!
Interested in more real-life experiences? Feel free to take a look at our Case Study at Thao & Co.
