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The Remote Interpreter
Chapter 1: An Overview of Remote Interpreting

Today, this setup is considered standard for on-site simultaneous interpreting. The stations have
evolved into either permanent or temporary booths shared by teams of interpreters. The interpreters
are somewhat removed from the main audience, but they are still colocated in the same room and,
until recently, usually in view of the speakers and the audience.
Still, the advent of simultaneous interpreting with equipment represents the first step toward
developing the technology used in modern remote interpreting. Remote simultaneous interpreting
(RSI) now refers to interpreters who are working truly off-site at a greater distance from the
participants. The history of modern RSI is discussed in more detail later in this chapter and in
Chapters 1 and 3 of Volume 2.

From the telephone to the video screen

Telephonic or over-the-phone interpreting (OPI)
While the first remote interpreting technology technically began with simultaneous interpreting in
the early 20 century, the origins of remote interpreting as we know it today came later and were
th
based on the telephone.

Over-the-phone interpreting (OPI) can be defined as follows:
Interpreting conducted over a telephone line when the interpreter or at least one participant
is in a remote location.

Note 1: OPI encounters may have all participants in different locations.
Note 2: The term OPI is also commonly used to refer to other forms of audio-only
interpreting (AOI) over the internet that do not involve telephones or telephone lines.

Telephone lines were first considered as a possible way to deliver interpreting services in the 1950s
(Pöchhacker & Kelly, 2015, p. 413). However, it wasn’t until 1973 that OPI was first introduced in
Australia, in response to increased immigration, through a national telephone interpreting service.
Initially the service was offered mainly for emergencies but over time its reach expanded. (See
Volume 1, Chapter 2, for details.)

In the United States, OPI started in San Jose, California, in 1982 when a police officer experimented
with providing interpretation for immigrant community members interacting with law enforcement.
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Soon, telephonic interpreting expanded into healthcare and other markets.
Two decades later, OPI’s structure and the areas it covered evolved:

In the 1990s, a handful of other companies began to emerge on the U.S. telephone
interpreting scene. Along with the decreased prices in long-distance calls and toll-free
access, and the constant immigration trends, the demand for telephone interpreting in the
United States began to experience enormous growth (Kelly, 2008, p. 5).

OPI was adopted in other countries around the world. By 2007, OPI was a USD 2.5 global billion market,
with companies in the Netherlands, Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, among others, listed

5 Telephone Interpreting Services. LanguageLine Solutions. Retrieved from: https://www.languageline.com/s/Phone

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