Simultaneous Voice Over
Recently, I was part of a team of interpreters hired to provide “simultaneous voice over” for a multi-day sales event. The first time I took on an assignment from this client was during the pandemic, so I don’t know if the format used for the conference was around from before. But it has become evident that over the last couple of years, they were perfecting the art of producing a conference comprising a series of highly-curated, highly-performative, pre-recorded productions.
The reason I referred to my work as simultaneous voice over, and not simultaneous interpretation, is because the nature of the work was just that. Because all of the sessions were edited productions, the speakers were either reading or acting off of a script. The challenge in this, for an interpreter, is most of all, speed. The transcripts I received contained an average of about 4,000 words for a video of 20 minutes. Conventional speech ranges from 120-150 words per minute, so these people were talking fast. Talking at that pace is exhausting. Imagine interpreting that into a different language! In addition, because the content is edited down to every second, the speakers are not using any fillers or taking their time to articulate a concept. This in turn gives the interpreter absolutely no time to process the information that is coming through the headset.
Once again, valuable past experience came to the rescue. I knew what to expect. I knew to ask the PM for the transcript and the videos in the week leading up to the event, because I knew they were essential in doing my job. Without access to material for preparation, interpreting this event would be a near-impossible task. I translated the transcripts into Korean (doing my fair share of research of technical terms and acronyms along the way), checked them against the video content, and practiced read them out loud as quickly as I could to try and match the speed of the speaker on the screen. Both intellectual memory (knowing the content) and muscle memory (pronunciation and cadence) came into full play for this event. Also critical was coordinating with my virtual booth partner. We divided up the sessions so that we didn’t have to each translate 20K+ words in advance. These sessions were relatively short, so handover was not necessary. But had they been longer, we absolutely would had to identify the nearly non-existent natural breaks in the video to ensure a smooth transition.
After the very first session I interpreted for the same event in a previous year, I remember being shell-shocked at its format and pace. But this format has become more commonplace, although I wouldn’t say mainstream, in the past few years and probably is here to stay. The nature of the service I provide for these events is distinctly different from simultaneous interpreting, and I feel like it warrants its own pricing model. I haven’t come up with one yet, but it certainly warrants further exploration.