Exploring the acceptance of supporting tools in public service interpreting: a questionnaire study

Abstract

In the past two decades, the fast development of both communication and digital technologies has led to profound changes in how interpreting services are performed. Several studies have reported on how interpreters perceive and experience these technological changes and on interpreters' attitudes towards specific types of technologies in different interpreting sectors, such as public service interpreting or PSI. In this study, we focus on technologies which can support the interpreter' s preparation, performance and workflow of onsite interpreting assignments, in particular: machine translation tools, digital glossaries for manual term look-up, automatic terminology recognition tools based on speech recognition, note-taking apps and voice-recording tools. Our contribution aims to present the results of a survey into public service interpreters' use and acceptance of these types of technologies in the PSI sector.