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Note: we are sending this out to both our legal technology staffing clients and our many language industry professional clients
Katrina Conti
Head of Operations
The Posse List
13 March 2020 (Washington, DC) - Travel bans of continental proportions, stock markets in free fall, conferences cancelled everywhere. As the world grapples with a pandemic not seen in a hundred years, the language industry, too, is fast adjusting to what is going to be weeks of disruption.
Individual initiatives by national governments have varied based on the number of identified cases in a given location. But, generally speaking, the goal is to curtail the movement of people, thereby
"flattening the curve" of infection.
Our legal technology staffing clients are having a rougher time structuring remote work because many of them are in the "managed review" space and so have constructed large, IT-complex review centers. In Washington, D.C. and New York City (the two centers with the largest number of language translation projects) only three staffing agencies in D.C. and four in NYC are advertising remote work language projects, two of them having set-up remote review structures several years ago. As a point of reference, about 65 entities service the legal language market in D.C., and about 35 in NYC.
We have been informed that at least 12 more such staffing agencies will "come on line" with remote review structures very shortly. Many of the members on our legal technology job listservs have noted they are eschewing "on site work" because
"this work can really be done from home and requiring people to go to office in locations that are under a state of emergency are putting the health and safety of the community at risk."
We post language projects across a wide spectrum, across 5 continents, so this is just a snapshot select players in the global language industry. But it suggests the experiences of LSPs and language professionals depend on both location and the type of work handled.
- Uneven Impact on Interpreting. Naturally, interpreters who typically work face to face have been hit the hardest, so far, by containment measures as events and conferences across all industries are postponed or canceled. The worse the global situation gets (and country governments react accordingly), the more clients rely on the force majeure argument to try to avoid any cancellation fees. One of our major German conference interpreter agencies noted that March in Germany is usually the conference "high season" - now swept by a wave of cancellations. Furthermore, the worse the global situation gets (and country governments react accordingly), the more clients rely on the force majeure argument to try to avoid any cancellation fees, which only worsens the economic impact.
- On the wider, international level. FIT Europe has appealed to associations and institutions to include language professionals in different measures to alleviate the fallout from coronavirus. We have also been tracking via Twitter how coronavirus has affected language professionals. In contrast to on-site interpreters, companies that specialize in remote interpreting technology solutions stand to gain substantially as clients, who typically rely on on-site interpreting (outside of events and conferences), experiment with other setups. We are hearing that some hospitals and large healthcare organizations are beginning to advise their on-site interpreter staff, as well as their contract interpreters, to stay home or work remotely.
- Technology solutions. Boostlingo, a San Francisco-based remote interpreting technology solutions company, has already seen an increase in inbound inquiries regarding its platform. In times of chaos like this, access to language support is critical. In the short term, I see a tactical need to engage remote interpreting until the outbreak is effectively contained. In the long run, I think it will show the importance of remote interpreting solutions and strategies that can be mobilized quickly. And those who are already set up for telephonic or VRI (video remote interpreting) support are well-placed, and we would expect that they will see a sharp increase in their remote interpreting requests and workload in the ensuing months.
- But impact depends on the industry. It might seem that translation, usually carried out by specialists working from their own homes, is lockdown-proof. Less so in the legal industry but that is changing. Over the last year, remote non-English legal language translation and non-English legal document review projects have spiked 8% as more and more legal staffing agencies adopt state-of-the-art remote systems. But the impact of coronavirus is not limited to technology and logistics. Demand from end-clients is highly industry-dependent, and not all sectors have been affected in the same way or to the same extent. It is currently difficult to make an industry-by-industry assessment of any impact on translation demand. This weekend I will try to provide an industry-by-industry analysis.
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