Hello, and welcome to this training on Zoom Best Practices for Court Interpreters. This training is being provided by the Judicial Council of California and the National Center for State Courts. My name is Tambra Hilton, and I am an attorney and a state and federally certified freelance Spanish court interpreter based in Tucson, Arizona. And I will be your faculty for today. The purpose of this training is to provide interpreters with an understanding of best practices when interpreting for court events using Zoom, including using Zoom with the simultaneous feature activated. Our goal is to provide you with best practices and information that will help you succeed when using Zoom to provide court interpretation remotely in a variety of different scenarios. During this training, we'll be going over a number of different topics. We'll begin by discussing some best practices for setting up your remote workstation and any equipment that you may need when using Zoom to provide interpretation. And we will also be providing a brief overview of the Zoom platform, including some of the tools that Zoom has that may be useful for court interpreters to use during remote interpreted events. After that, we'll move on to how to use the simultaneous interpretation feature that's available in Zoom, as well as some platform specifics to be aware of when using Zoom for remote simultaneous interpretation. In addition to going over how to use the feature that is designed in Zoom for providing simultaneous interpretation, we'll also talk about some other ways that you might be able to provide simultaneous interpretation using Zoom, even when you're not using the simultaneous feature, as well as how you can use Zoom to support consecutive interpretation and site translation. Additionally, we'll also talk about how to use Zoom to support team and relay interpreting, as well as how to handle situations where confidential communications, like for example, between an attorney and a client. And finally, we'll talk about some common issues on Zoom and how to troubleshoot those. So let's get started. First of all, I would like to talk about the interpreter workstation. Before I get into that, what I'd like to emphasize is that it's important that you're comfortable with your setup. Some people also may have different setups depending on where they're working. Some people may work from home. Other interpreters may be working from a space within the courthouse or somewhere offsite. And the space requirements here that we're going to share are going to apply to all possible configurations. So the first thing that you need to make sure is available to you is that you have a quiet, private space free of distraction. It's important that other people are not working in the same space as you. So this will not work if you have other interpreters all working from the same space. So this needs to be a dedicated space per interpreter. And it needs to be a space where confidentiality can be maintained. So that means that your space should ideally have a door that you can close so that others cannot hear your conversation. It's also important to not expect to be able to interpret while doing other tasks. So interpreting remotely or otherwise is not a multitasking sort of job. So make sure that your schedule is clear, your space is clear before you join a meeting for interpretation. So one of the first considerations when choosing your workspace is making sure that you have good lighting. As court interpreters, unlike, say, conference interpreters, we do need to be seen and we should make sure that we can be seen clearly. So the most important aspect of lighting is that making sure that it is coming from the front and not from the back. So if you have your workstation set up to where there's a window behind you, that is going to make it very difficult for people to see you. The best way to ensure good lighting is simply to put your computer directly in front of a window. That way your face will be lit from the window. That's the easiest way to accomplish this. Other things that you can do on this screen, I've also got this floor lamp. This is one of the best alternative ways, apart from a window, to make sure you have good lighting because the light will point up and reflect down from the ceiling. So that will provide some of the best lighting that you can get with objects, with lamps that you may just have around your house. You can also go online and for about $30 to $50, you can buy one of these ring lights here that people usually use for creating content to be posted online. You can also use one of these. This will work very well also. And the next thing to consider is your background. So before you join a meeting, you'll want to make sure that you have removed any visual distractions from your background, anything that you wouldn't want the court to see, especially if you're in your home, right? So it will be important to consider what will be shown on camera when you turn your camera on. One easy way to resolve this issue completely, especially if it's difficult for you to create a tidy and professional background, is just to use a virtual background. And I'm going to quickly share my screen and zoom here so that you can see how to activate a virtual background. So let me switch this real quick. Okay, there it is. And now I'm sharing my zoom screen and you can see it's really easy to get into this settings. You can click on this little up arrow next to your video on off icon, and then we'll choose virtual background. And you can see I've got this virtual background selected. I can also change to another virtual background, perhaps this one, and then switch back. I can also from this, from this screen, I can access all of my other settings as well. Let me just X out of this real quick. And the other option is to blur your background. So you can see how that looks. I've just selected blur my background. It's the easiest option because you don't even have to open the video settings to do this. But I'll show you what that looks like right now. And so because I've got blur on right now, that's what it looks like. So you can see that my spaces is somewhat hidden by the blur, but maybe not as much as it is with a virtual background. So let me go ahead and X out of this, and I'll come back to the PowerPoint. The other thing to consider with regards to your workstation itself is that you have a sufficient work surface, so a desk where you have room to take notes, a comfortable chair. As we know, we may be sitting for a long time while we work. And anything that helps you perform best as an interpreter. So let's turn to the technical side of this. And here, I'll start by talking about what kind of computer you'll need. And luckily, virtual conferencing technology has advanced to the point where pretty much any device is going to work. So all you really need is a modern computer, preferably a desktop. And I'll explain that in a moment. But a laptop is also acceptable. The reason why I say that a desktop is better is just because, as you'll see as I continue to advance through the slides here, there are a lot of different things that we're plugging into our computers to make interpretation possible. And usually, laptops have fewer ports than desktop computers. So a desktop computer is usually going to be your best option. Also, luckily, the cheapest option. So we recommend that. But you're going to be just fine on a laptop as well. What we don't recommend, though, and I really want to emphasize this because I've had so many issues when interpreters use tablets and smartphones as their exclusive device for interpreting. Tablets and smartphones, there are a lot of drawbacks to using those. First of all, the type of internet that you can use is limited. You will almost certainly be on Wi-Fi or cellular data. You will not be able to connect an ethernet cord to those devices. Additionally, there's not a lot of screen real estate. And so if you're using a tablet or especially a smartphone, you're probably losing out on the opportunity to quickly and easily type in a word into your online dictionary and pull that up for yourself. So that in and of itself should be a substantial enough drawback that you would want to avoid using a tablet or a smartphone. And lastly, these sometimes it may not be possible for you to both charge your smartphone and use a pair of headphones with it. A moment ago, we were just talking about the importance of choosing computer equipment that can be hardwired to your router. And you might be asking yourself, why? Why in an age of Wi-Fi, is it recommended for me to pull out a long cable and connect my router directly to my computer? Well, first and foremost, this is about stability. Wi-Fi has a tendency to lose signal strength and stability due to a variety of factors, including perhaps your distance from the router and other things that you might not be aware of or have any control over. The best way to control for the most stable internet connection possible is simply hardwiring directly to your router. You may have some challenges doing this if you're using a laptop that doesn't have an ethernet port. The way I've gotten around this is just ordering an adapter that plugs into one of my USB ports on my laptop. And that's worked perfectly for me all of these years that we've been remote, just connecting an adapter, $7 to $10 online, and using that to connect to ethernet. We also don't recommend cellular data. It's even less stable, less controllable than Wi-Fi because it can be affected by atmospheric conditions or a variety of other factors that you will not be able to either predict or control. So for all of those reasons, we recommend that wherever possible, just pick up an ethernet cable as long as you need and connect your computer directly to your router. All right, so turning to bandwidth. So starting with Zoom's recommendation, to run Zoom, you absolutely need a minimum of one megabit upload speed and 600 kilobits per second download speed. However, I have to say this is very, very slow. And if you really are limited to an internet connection of this speed, you're going to definitely have difficulties maintaining a clear and uninterrupted connection. So my recommendation where I would feel safe is a minimum of 10 megabits download and 10 megabits up. And I would make sure that that's hardwired so it doesn't fluctuate at all so that I can maintain that speed. You can check your internet speed at speedtest.net, this link that we have here on the slide. And before you start any job, I would make sure that any applications, not just applications that are using the internet, but any application at all that I don't need is closed. So what I do at the beginning of a job to optimize my internet connection is I restart my computer and I restart my router. And that way I know for sure that I'm getting the most that I can out of my internet connection and my computer at that moment. Turning now to headsets, this is a very individualized choice and you'll want to look for a headset first and foremost that is comfortable for you. There are a lot of different designs, some rest on your ears, some will completely cover your ears. And the important thing is to try it, make sure that it's comfortable for you to wear for long periods of time. From a specification standpoint, we say noise canceling here. What we're referring to with noise canceling is not necessarily in the headphones. There are noise canceling headphones that you can get, but what we're specifically referring to here is the microphone. The microphone should be advertised as noise canceling. That means it will prioritize your voice over any background noise that you might have in your space. So it will be very helpful to the court and to you as an interpreter and a professional if your headset has this feature. Next you'll want to make sure that you choose a headset that connects via USB as opposed to a 3.5 millimeter jack. 3.5 millimeter jack headsets are pretty common and they're often the cheapest option, but the issue is that a lot of computers will not read that you're connecting not just a headset but also a microphone. You will find that you are able to hear through that headset, but your microphone actually won't work and probably you will be speaking through your laptop or computer microphone and the court will be unable to hear you as clearly as they would if you had a properly functioning microphone. Choosing one that connects via USB is going to completely solve that problem because you will be able to see it and select it in Zoom. So for all of those reasons, even if that didn't entirely make sense to you, just look for one that is USB. You are more likely to be successful in getting Zoom to read both your headphone and the microphone portion of your headset if you use one that's USB. We recommend strongly against earbuds that connect via Bluetooth such as AirPods and similar that you would use with your phone. These usually sound pretty bad when used with a computer, especially if you're using AirPods and you happen to be using a Windows device. They really don't work very well and your sound quality will be very low. We also have a lot of problems with earbuds not being read properly, with technical difficulties getting the microphone to work. So if you do wish to use something Bluetooth that connects via Bluetooth, look for something that is professionally designed for, for example, call center employees, things like that. So it would be a professional headset that happens to connect via Bluetooth, but do not use the ones that are designed for phones such as AirPods. Turning to the topic of specifically microphones, as we discussed before, the microphone might actually be integrated with your headset. However, it's possible that you might, for your own reasons, wish to choose a microphone that is a tabletop microphone separate from your headphone. If you do that, that's fine. I personally prefer the Goosetop tabletop microphone as shown here in the picture. But if you choose something else, the main recommendation is just to make absolutely sure that you choose a USB microphone as opposed to one that connects to your computer via a 3.5 millimeter jack. In terms of your webcam, the webcam that comes built into most computers is going to work just fine. So most laptops these days, if not all laptops these days, come with a built-in webcam. So if that works on your computer, you're going to be just fine. There's no reason why you need to go out and buy a dedicated external webcam. However, that is an option. It will almost certainly improve your video quality. Most external webcams are able to offer better video quality than what's available built into your laptop. So that's a choice. If you want to get an external webcam, pretty much any commercially available option is going to be sufficient for Cort. In terms of additional equipment, here's a list of things that I've found helpful. First and foremost is dual monitors. I really appreciate having a second monitor because then I can put Zoom on one screen and then any dictionaries or other materials that help support my interpretation, I will put those on the second monitor. Especially if I'm working in a team with a partner, sometimes I'll need to have chat available and it's helpful to me to have that on a second screen. So all of my support applications go on one screen and the virtual meeting that I'm working in, that will go on my primary screen. Other things that you might choose to use would be things like note-taking devices. People like notables or other electronic devices that you might use to take notes. Pen and paper, of course, is just fine. There's no reason why you have to move away from that. A secondary device can be really helpful. There are a few scenarios where you definitely want a second device. One is perhaps where you are working in a team and you want to be able to hear your partner. You may need a secondary device for that. Another is when you're using the Zoom simultaneous feature, it can be extremely helpful to have a secondary device also logged into the same meeting that is not designated as an interpreter. Don't worry if that doesn't make sense right now because I'll cover it as we move forward. Just kind of put a pin in this idea that a secondary device that's logged into the same Zoom meeting where you're working but that is not designated as interpreter, that can be very helpful to you. Finally, you might have an application open for back channel. As I was saying, on my second monitor, I like to have a chat or something open to connect with my partner so that we can share terminology or we may have a separate audio channel going between us so that we can hear each other interpreting. There's a lot of different things that you might kind of add on to the basics of microphone, computer, headset kind of a situation, but these are all going to be optional depending on your comfort level and your kind of appetite for adding devices and applications to your practice. In terms of getting set up, as I said before, it's very important to download and install the Zoom desktop client, the Zoom application. Before you get started at all offering interpretation via Zoom, go ahead and just go to this link, zoom.us, slash download, and download that client. You can practice by doing a test meeting, and there's a link here for that. And then just check for and install updates regularly. Zoom luckily pretty much will force updates whenever they're available. So Zoom will pretty much take care of that for you, but you can also check for them as well yourself. Finally, and this may seem a bit obvious, but make sure all your devices are charged or plugged in, especially if you happen to be using a smartphone or a tablet perhaps as a backup or secondary device, make sure those are charged before you get started, make sure your laptop is plugged in, make sure you have your charging cables on hand if you do not have your device plugged in so that you can charge them as soon as your device gets a little bit low. So make sure you're near an outlet and you have those charging cables nearby. All right, so let's get into Zoom itself. So I'll show you. These are our basic features and from here what I'm going to do is I'm going to again switch to my Zoom application and I'm just going to kind of give you a quick run through here in the Zoom application itself. So let me go ahead and share my screen within Zoom again. And let me go through these one by one. So here's our mute, unmute, and you can see right now that my microphone is active and you can see that I'm talking as well because you see this green light going up and down. I'll go ahead and mute and then unmute there and here's my video as well. So I can turn that on, turn that off, and as we discussed before, you can choose your virtual background. It will blur your background also from this icon. If you have multiple webcams, you can also choose a webcam from here. For example, I have both an integrated camera and an external one so I could choose either of these. I also would like to point out that you can also choose a speaker and a microphone from the little up arrow next to the microphone here. And you see a lot of options here that are, you will not have this many options on your computer. So most people are going to have one or two microphones. This will be your built-in one, this Realtek if you're using Windows, and then you may have another microphone that is available for you to select and see for your speaker. You'll have your Realtek if you're on a Windows device and then you might have one other, your USB headset that you might have available. The next thing I want to show you here as well is that you can access your audio settings and do a test of your sound. So this is something that even though I've interpreted in 100, probably more than that, Zoom meetings, I always test my devices. Even though they're the same devices that I've always used and I'm very confident in those devices, I always make sure that they sound right first. So first of all, I can make sure that I've got the right devices selected here. I'm using my Windows speakers right now and I'm also using a standalone microphone and then I can test it. So it'll do a quick recording of my voice and then when I'm done, it'll play it back. You can also test your speaker to make sure that you can hear it will play a sound as well as show you that it's playing. So those are some of the most important features. I find them extremely helpful in terms of the audio. So let's go through some of the other icons down here. I really value participants and a little bit further on in this presentation, I'll show you how to use the participants list to troubleshoot. Right now, you can just see me. I'm the only one in this meeting but if there were more people, this participants list would provide a lot of information. So whenever I join a meeting, I always open participants list here first. The next thing I always open is chat because I may need to receive chat messages from other people in the meeting while I'm interpreting or before I'm interpreting. So that's very helpful to have it open so I don't miss anything. Share screen. As an interpreter, you probably won't need to share screen but essentially the way it works is you click on share screen and if it's available for you, you can choose the window that you want to show to the court. You can also use reactions. So occasionally, these are helpful. I tend to just raise my hand but you can raise your hand. Actually, that's clap. So let me go ahead and change that raise hand and this will notify the other meeting participants that you want to speak. So let me go ahead and lower my hand. And also, you have a bunch of different view options available to you. That's here in the upper right-hand corner. You have speaker, gallery, and immersive. I wouldn't worry about but your two primary ones that are going to be most helpful to you as an interpreter are speaker and gallery. I usually choose gallery because it allows me to see everybody at once. Speaker just shows you the person who's actively speaking with other participants across the top of the screen. So I usually use gallery but sometimes speaker might be more appropriate depending on your preferences. And finally, meeting information can be really helpful. Like if you need to quickly share a link with your partner, you go up to this little bitty shield, this green icon in the corner. See that? And you can access all of the information about the meeting. So you can copy this meeting ID, copy the link, and pass that quickly maybe to a partner that can't find the link that needs to join the meeting as well. Everything about the meeting and that you would need to join it is found here. So those are the primary things that I think are most useful for interpreters. So let me come back to my PowerPoint presentation here. So again, share screen. And I'm going to come to my second screen where my presentation is. Okay, so let's go over the different roles that are available in Zoom. First, we have our host, which in enable interpretation, we're talking specifically about simultaneous interpretation. This would have no bearing on your ability to do consecutive in a Zoom meeting. But your host is the only role that can initiate interpretation, that can manage the feature by selecting or changing the interpreter or ending the interpretation. So even though there is a co-host role available in Zoom, co-hosts cannot manage the interpretation feature, only a host can. One thing that is useful though is that one person can have multiple roles that can be swapped around. So for example, it's happened a lot that I'll be joining a court hearing, a virtual court hearing, and the court wants to use simultaneous interpretation, but for whatever reason, they're having difficulties getting it set up. So I'll ask them to make me host, and then I'll quickly make myself interpreter, and then I'll hand it back. I would note that this is different from WebEx. If your court uses WebEx, hosts cannot make themselves interpreters. So that is a very key difference between Zoom and WebEx in that the interpreter can help kind of manage the feature in Zoom, but really can't in WebEx. And as I was just saying, you can swap these roles around. You could be interpreter, you could be host, you could be participant. All of this is very fluid and very flexible within Zoom, which is helpful. Turning to the interpreter role, let me just start by giving a very brief explanation of how this feature works. When you activate simultaneous interpretation, what Zoom is effectively doing is creating an additional audio channel, and someone who needs interpretation can select that audio channel, and that's going to allow them to hear the interpreter when the interpreter is speaking on that audio channel. So when you designate someone as interpreter, you're kind of locking them into the interpreter audio channels. The interpreter will get two. They'll get the source language, which is more than likely going to be English, and the target language, which will be the language spoken by your non-English speaking court user. So that's a very fundamental, very brief overview, but that is how the interpreter role works. You will lock the interpreter into those audio channels. A participant is just your average user. They don't have any special privileges on the meeting, and the host can decide, in fact, what privileges the participants will have. Participants are able to choose a language channel to listen to, so they can select which of the interpreter's language channels they would like to join, and they can participate in every other way in the meeting. They just won't have a lot of controls. All right, so we've been hinting at this all along, but let's talk about how to use the Zoom simultaneous feature. So as I was saying, what happens with the simultaneous feature is that when you activate it, you create one or more additional audio channels besides the main original audio, as it's called within Zoom. So users will be able to choose language channels, and when the interpreter is working on that language channel, they'll be able to hear the interpretation. So just like joining in Zoom as a consecutive interpreter, you can join the hearing directly from the email sent by the court. You can also go to zoom.us and select join. Again, make sure that you have the application downloaded so that you can join via the application. It will make your life a lot easier. And just sign in using the login information provided by the court. One thing that's important and helpful is that either as you join, or once you're already in the meeting, you identify yourself as the interpreter. So you'll want to change your screen name to be, for example, Mandarin interpreter, and then your name. It is most helpful if you start with interpreter, language interpreter, so that the court can immediately find you in the participants list and get you set up, and then followed by your name. So that's something that courts really appreciate, and it makes things a lot more efficient. When it comes to setting up, one thing that is helpful to hosts, sometimes depending on your court's protocols for assigning interpreters, is that you are signed into your Zoom application. So as I was saying before, you'll want to download the Zoom application to your computer. You'll also want to set up a free account. And then when you join the meeting, go ahead and sign in, hopefully using the same email that the court has for you. And why do we recommend this? So if you look to the right here, I have a screenshot of what the simultaneous interpretation setup dialogue looks like for the host. And you can see that there's some asterisks, and it says not joined. That means they pre-assigned you as the interpreter, but you didn't sign into the application first. So Zoom was unable to recognize you. This is easily fixed. It's not something the host can't get around, but it's helpful to them if they have pre-assigned you to join, signed in, logged into the Zoom app so that they can find you on the list and you're automatically assigned as an interpreter when they launch the feature. Once you've been assigned as the interpreter, you'll see what we call the language channel toggle. And this allows you to go back and forth between languages. So if you're hearing Spanish, you would be interpreting to English, speaking on the English channel. And if you're hearing English and interpreting that simultaneously to Spanish, you would want to be on the Spanish channel, as shown here in this image. You can verify what language you're on either looking at your toggle, which will be in the lower portion of your Zoom screen, or by checking the participant list. So you can see here that next to the interpreter's name, there's the little circle with EN. And that says to anyone looking at the participant list, not just the interpreter, but anyone can see this, they can track whether you're on the English or the Spanish channel. So that's a bit of the helpful information that you can get from the participants list. Now, note that if for any reason at any time, this toggle disappears, that means you're no longer assigned as interpreter. It means the host did something, maybe accidentally ended interpretation. Maybe you dropped off the meeting, came back and weren't reassigned. But you should stop interpreting if you see that disappear and immediately let the court know that you need to be reassigned as an interpreter. Reason being that if this disappears, that means you're just being heard by everyone. If it's there, that means that it's functioning properly and you will be heard just by the LEP. But if it disappears, you're heard by everyone. So you'll be disrupting the court proceedings with your interpretation. From the host perspective, you can launch interpretation from the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. So I'll just circle that for you real quick. Once you click on that as host, it pops up this language dialogue and that's where you may see any interpreter that's been pre-assigned or if you didn't pre-assign anyone, then you just start typing the name of anyone in the meeting and it will appear on the dropdown list there under search by name. It's important to make sure that you do choose a language because here you can see language, language. You're not going to be able to activate interpretation as a host until both a source and a target language have been selected. So English, Spanish, or English, other, but make sure that you have two languages selected. Anytime during the meeting, the host can manage interpretation, meaning they can add or remove an interpreter, change languages, add languages. This is fluid and functional throughout the hearing, which makes the feature really adaptable. So that's something that I appreciate about the Zoom interpretation feature. Now, from a listener perspective, let's talk about how to connect. And this is, I want to say, this is very important for interpreters to understand. Your language interpretation controls as an interpreter are incredibly simple. However, it is not necessarily so simple for LEPs, our non-English speaking court users, to activate interpretation. So it's very important that interpreters understand this because you will be more than likely in a position where you have to explain this to them. So first of all, for those who are on a computer, it's pretty simple. You'll just look for the globe icon at the bottom of the screen, and then you can select English or Spanish. So when you're explaining to someone who is on a computer, so you'll want to check, make sure they're on a computer, you can just tell them to look for the globe icon and then select English or Spanish. This gets a little more difficult if a user is on a smartphone. So they will never see a globe. That's the most important thing to understand. If you tell a smartphone user to look for the globe, they'll never see it. So if you're telling someone, for example, to look for the globe, and they say, I don't see a globe, then make sure to ask them what kind of device they're on, because they are probably on a smartphone and they're not going to be able to access it. So the first thing they'll need to do is select More. And then when they select those three dots with More, they'll get this menu. And from there, all they need to do is select Language Interpretation. And then this dialog will pop up, and they can select English or Spanish. And then they need to click Done. In Zoom, it's very important that they click Done. If they just stop here, they will not hear interpretations. They need to click Done before they can proceed. And after they do that, they'll hear the interpretation about 80-20. So they'll hear the interpreter about 80%, and then in the background, about 20%, they'll hear the court, any language speaker who's not on their channel. You'll also see here that we have Mute Original Audio, which is also available on the smartphone app as that toggle, which you might have noticed. I'll go back and show you real quick. So there's this toggle there, right here. And on computer, it says it as one of the options when you click on the globe. But for court, we really don't recommend that you use Mute Original Audio. The reason for this is simply that if you select Mute Original Audio as the interpretation user, you're not going to hear anyone who is not speaking on your language channel. And that can have really negative effects. If there are any users that the LEP needs to hear that are not on channel, they won't hear those. So for court purposes, we don't recommend using Mute Original Audio in almost all situations. So let me go ahead and do a quick live demonstration of this. I just showed you via screenshots, but I think it'll be really helpful to see it live. So I'll go back to sharing my Zoom screen, and I'll show you how this works. All right, so now I'm sharing my Zoom screen, and you can see that I have another participant here who is my Spanish interpreter. And so I'll just quickly walk you through how setting up interpretation looks from the host perspective. So first, I'm going to click on the globe icon as the host. Doing that will bring up for me the Manage Interpretation dialog. I have Sign Language Interpretation activated on my account, but that's beyond the scope of this module. So we'll just focus on language interpretation. Here you can see that my Spanish interpreter, Monica, preloaded here. I already have English and Spanish available, selected as my languages. You can see that I also have the Interpretation Start button available to me. If anything was incorrect here, if I didn't have an interpreter selected, for example, I would not be able to start. See, you can see how that's grayed out. It's no longer blue. But if I open this up and I add an interpreter, language interpreter, right, not sign language, just regular language, then I can add Monica. See how she just pops up right there on screen? And then you can see that this is still not activated. It's still not blue. And what's missing? The target language. So let me just select Spanish. And there you go. The start interpretation is available. So I'll hit start. And now interpretation is active. So if we look up here in the participants list, it shows that Monica is working into Spanish. I can change the channel. So Monica is now speaking in English. So I know that if I wish to listen to her, I just have to go and choose. So I can choose a channel, English or Spanish, to listen to her. If I want to hear Monica now, I need to be on the English channel. And again, see, look, I've switched back. So it says ES. Now I know that I would need to check the Spanish channel if I want to hear her. So that's basically the interpretation feature from the host side in a nutshell. It's worth understanding this as an interpreter in case you're called on to assist with that. So let me go ahead and come back to my... And now what I'd like to show you is the interpreter perspective. So let me just reorient this real quick. And I will show you what this looks like when you're designated as interpreter. All right. So we're back. And at this point, I now have another device that's set up as host. And so I'll go ahead and make myself interpreter. And you'll be able to see what that looks like. So I'm going to go through those same steps. And I'll update so that now watch the participant list as I do this, because you'll see it switch from Monica to Tambor, Spanish interpreter. And there we go. So now you can see that I am on ES. And look what just appeared at the bottom of my screen. This is the thing that you want to make sure it doesn't disappear. And look, I can also move it around so I can take this and I can put it somewhere perhaps that's more convenient for me, just making sure that I keep track of its location. So you can see right now I'm speaking to Spanish. And this, I can change English, Spanish, Spanish, English. Now notice this is the speaking to. It's very important that you understand the difference between speaking to and listening in, because I can also listen to another channel. And that's helpful. This is primarily designed for relay if there were multiple languages being spoken on the meeting other than English. So if there were another interpreter whose language I didn't understand, Amharic for example, and they were interpreting simultaneously from Amharic to English, this is unlikely in a court scenario, I have to admit. But if they were speaking, interpreting simultaneously from Amharic to English, I would be able to select the English channel, and then I would hear their interpretation and be able to interpret that to Spanish. This is also useful for team interpreting because you can use it to listen into your partner when they're interpreting to your language. But just keep in mind that you'll want to change that, make sure that you're not listening to yourself when you start interpreting Spanish again. Okay, so if this ever disappears, then I'll show you what that looks like when it disappears, end interpretation. Now you know that you are no longer the interpreter. While I'm working, I need to stop speaking so as not to disrupt proceedings, and I need to draw the court's attention to what's happened so that they can fix it and reset me as the interpreter. So that's a demonstration from the interpreter and the host perspective, and so I'll move on from here. Okay, apart from simultaneous interpretation using the Zoom simultaneous feature, there are other ways of delivering interpretation on Zoom. So let's take a look at those. So even when the simultaneous feature is not enabled, you can still interpret simultaneously. I'll talk about the primary way that you can do this in just a moment on the next slide. But you can also, of course, even if the simultaneous feature is not activated, you can interpret consecutively. That will always be the case. You can also do sight translation. A lot of times, the document to be sight translated will appear on screen. The clerk or an attorney or the court will share the document and you will sight translate it. So those two modes are not dependent on any special feature. You just join, whether or not they're using the simultaneous feature, you will be able to support in consecutive or sight translation mode. Now, in terms of providing simultaneous interpretation, when the Zoom simultaneous feature is not activated, you just need to use a second device. And on the screen here, it says connect, but basically what I'm talking about is grabbing a phone and using that to call the LEP court user. So what does this look like? You, as the interpreter, you're connected to Zoom. The LEP court user, the non-English speaking court user, is also connected to Zoom, hopefully on a computer, so they're looking at the screen, and they will hear everything just like a normal participant, right? Now, the trick is to make a phone call between the non-English speaking court user and the interpreter. And that way, the interpreter can provide simultaneous interpretation of what they're hearing over the phone and the non-English speaking court user just holds the phone to their ear or uses earbuds to listen to what's being said. Now, as the interpreter, you may wish to keep your number private. You can dial star six seven to do that. And I would just caution that you'll want to, if you're using this exterior channel, this second connection, right, for providing interpretation, realize that this line is not being monitored by the court. You need to maintain transparency. If the LEP says something over the line, you'll be responsible for communicating that to the court or telling the non-English speaking court user in advance that you are not listening to that line, you are not monitoring it. And if they wish to say something to the court, they need to open their microphone in Zoom and you will interpret it. That's my preference. That's how I do it. I actually do not monitor that line if I can help it. And if I see the person trying to speak, then I let the court know to advise them to turn on their microphone in Zoom. Now, the thing that commonly happens with this is that a person only has one device. They only have one possible connection and the court would still like simultaneous interpretation. So sometimes the court will direct the interpreter to call the non-English speaking court user and direct the non-English speaking court user to simply hang up from the Zoom meeting, to leave the Zoom meeting. This is not ideal. I do it, of course, if instructed, but the main issue with doing this is that there is no connection available for the non-English speaking court user to connect directly and independently with the court. It's only through you. And that can result in a lot of kind of difficult situations for the interpreter to manage. If they're having a lot of background noise coming over that line, if the person is speaking to them over that line, it can be hard for the interpreter to interpret simultaneously and also advise the court that there's something that's being said that they need to interpret to the court. Try and avoid being the only connection between the court and the LEP court user. But of course, if directed to do so, you can just call the individual and they would be basically dependent on you as the interpreter to relay everything that's happening in the meeting to them in their language. Site translation, as I discussed before, court staff might screen share documents during the hearing and the interpreters would then be able to site translate them. You also might receive documents in advance or during the meeting that you will be site translating. So whether it's on screen or whether it's something that you have in front of you that you're site translating, it's pretty straightforward to handle this in a virtual conference setting. Consecutive interpretation, I think this needs very little explanation. Basically all you need to do is operate just as you would in person. You would interpret and then you would pause so that you can listen to another participant on the meeting speak and then you would interpret what you hear. So nothing really different. I think that it just bears saying that in order to provide interpretation, there's nothing special that you have to do if it's going to be in consecutive mode. All right, let's shift gears a little more into team and relay interpreting, which are both possible on Zoom, whether in consecutive or simultaneous mode. But let's talk about specifically how that works in simultaneous mode. All right, so let's start with relay interpreting. So as I was hinting at before when I was doing the demonstration, there is a relay feature built into the simultaneous function in Zoom. It's pretty neat. Basically what you're doing is you control it by this listening in feature and you would simply select the language that you need to hear. So on this meeting, perhaps there is English and Spanish and French, right? And so you have the option as the Spanish interpreter to listen to either the main audio, to listen to the English channel or to listen to French. Let's say you're a Spanish interpreter, you don't speak French. We have a French speaking court user and you need to be able to interpret that simultaneously to Spanish. So what you're going to do is select English and that way when your colleague, the French interpreter is working on the English channel, interpreting French to English, you listen to English and you will interpret to Spanish. This is most likely to happen as shown on screen in a setting where you have Spanish and perhaps an indigenous language spoken in a Spanish speaking country, such as our example for the purposes of this demonstration, which is Akateko. So you would have an English Spanish interpreter and you would have a Spanish Akateko interpreter. And then you would just use the relay controls to make sure that you're listening to a language that you understand so that you can interpret at any given time. Now, we say that this is not necessarily easy and that's because it is a little bit complicated to wrap your head around. The feature is as well designed as it can possibly be. However, there's not a lot that I would suggest changing about it to make it more intuitive or more simple. It's just something that you have to get used to. So if you're going to be on a meeting where it's anticipated that you'll be doing relay, this is something worth practicing in advance because it is not nearly as straightforward as just joining as a simultaneous interpreter and being designated when there's only one language being spoken on the meeting other than English. So keep in mind that it's not something that you can expect to just intuitively jump into. You should really practice it ahead of time. Now, the same function is useful for team interpreting. It's kind of like hacking the relay to make team interpretation easier. So for example, if I am an English Spanish interpreter and I have a colleague on the meeting who is also a Spanish interpreter, I could choose to listen in Spanish and that way I can monitor my partner. Moving to confidential communications. And again, just by way of explanation as to what I'm talking about when I speak of confidential communications, this is where a party or the court needs to speak to someone privately, right? So a lot of times it's an attorney who needs to speak with their client for a moment or the court needs to speak with attorneys. Basically what usually happens in Zoom is that they're placed in a breakout room. Luckily in Zoom, unlike WebEx at this time, you can have interpretation, simultaneous interpretation active on a meeting and also still use breakout rooms. So it's important to realize that the breakout rooms themselves do not support simultaneous interpretation, but you still can have both features active on the meeting. You, it's also possible to have interpreters, attorneys and our LEP court user connect separately on a separate phone line according to the directions of the court. If the court prefers not to place them in a breakout room, just make sure that if that is the method chosen for a confidential communication, that you are muted in Zoom and you have your mic and camera off. And that's just to protect the confidentiality of that communication. If the court can hear you, then even though the attorney and the client are muted in the Zoom virtual environment, you're leaking confidential information into the court space. All right, so coming to the end here as we start walking through some troubleshooting of some common issues. First of all, just some general things that we've already kind of covered. Just keep in mind that there is no simultaneous interpretation available in breakout sessions. Usually this is not a deal breaker. There is limited partner monitoring available in Zoom. So I recommend using a second device to establish a back channel with your partner, maybe a phone call, maybe a FaceTime or WhatsApp call. This is the best way to monitor your partner. And finally, relay using the relay feature is something that you need to learn how to use. So make sure that you practice that before it's asked of you. Now, moving to some kind of much more significant problems. One issue is that once the interpreter is designated as an interpreter using the simultaneous feature, the interpreter is not going to be able to address the main session, right? The interpreter is locked into two language channels, English and their working language, right? They're only going to be audible to people who have joined their language channel. So this is a situation that most often causes issues when the LEP court user is unable to connect to the language channel. The court has activated interpretation. In order to activate interpretation, they selected the interpreter. And now the person can't hear the interpreter and cannot find the interpreter on the language channel. So one way to avoid this that I use is the third option here, which is to connect a second device. I connect a second device and that way I can provide instructions to the non-English speaking court user. Another thing that this can be an issue as well, even once everybody is connected to a language channel, but keep in mind that if you need to say something to both sides, both the English speakers and the non-English speaking court users, you're going to have to say it on each language channel. So you need to toggle over to English, let the court know that there's an issue, an impediment to interpretation, and then toggle back to Spanish for transparency, let them know what you just said. Finally, you can also use the chat. That can be helpful if people are monitoring the chat. A lot of times they're not, but that is another way to communicate with the main session and independent of the language channels you're assigned to. This one is pretty easy to troubleshoot is when parties cannot hear the interpreter. Normally what you'll want to do is quickly check the participant list. If you're not the interpreter, I mean, that'll be on your screen, of course, in your controls, you'll know exactly what channel you're on. But if you're not the interpreter or you're troubleshooting a colleague, just look at the participant list to see where they're at, whether they're on English or Spanish. So it's possible that they're on the wrong channel. It's possible that they're on the right channel and you or the court need to explain the steps for selecting the correct channel. Another issue is that sometimes parties are not connected to audio properly. Like they've joined the meeting, but they haven't actually joined audio. So that means they're not going to be able to hear anything. And so when we say, have the court explain the steps for connecting to audio, they're going to need a visual aid to do this. They're going to either need to use the chat or have a visual aid or both in order to get people to connect to audio. What's going on, what this looks like. So on a phone, let's start with a computer actually. So on a computer, they're going to have this. We'll need to click that little up arrow between the headset where it says joint audio and then they have to click join with computer audio. On a phone on the left here, that's what it looks like. So they'll either need to, in order to hear, they will need to, it's like wifi or cellular data. If they click dial in, that's going to be a huge problem because they will not be able to connect to interpretation. If you realize someone has dialed in, even while connected with smartphone or computer, make sure that they leave the meeting and come back. That's the best way to fix it and properly select wifi or cellular data so that they can connect to interpretation. And speaking of that, we have the possibility that a user has dialed in or is using an incompatible device. So dial in users, users on devices such as Chromebooks or Linux, they cannot access interpretation. So the way I usually troubleshoot this is if they're on an incompatible device, I'll try and get them to join via browser. So instead of launching the Zoom app on their Linux or Chromebook, I just have them bypass the application and join via the browser. The other option I would suggest to people on incompatible devices, most people have a phone. So if they're not figuring out how to join via browser, it's not working for them, have them join via the smartphone app, which is also incidentally the same way that I troubleshoot dial in users. So if they've dialed into the Zoom meeting, I'll let them know, hey, we can't do interpretation this way. Can you leave, download the Zoom smartphone app and then click on the link to rejoin? So a lot of people are able to figure that out. Some people can't. And if they can't, if none of this works, then you may as an interpreter have to use a dual channel configuration. Hopefully they have an extra phone, maybe a family member can lend them a phone and they can listen to the court on one phone and listen to you on the other. Or you may just have to switch to consecutive interpretation, basically just following the instructions of the court at that point. As interpreter, you may also have to report impediments such as maybe you can't hear someone clearly enough to interpret, maybe there's some other issue going on. So if you're only using one device, you'll have to toggle to the English channel and hopefully the court is listening to the English channel and can hear you. You can also use raise hand under reactions as I showed you earlier. Let the court know that you have an issue or visually just raise hand on video. Because a lot of times in my experience, not all parties are properly connected to interpretation when I'm working, I find it easier to simply connect a second device that's not enabled for simultaneous interpretation, that's not designated for simultaneous interpretation. And I use that to speak to the court. That's the best way I've found to be able to communicate with the court when I'm working simultaneously using the interpreting feature. I'm gonna come to the participants list now because as I said before, you can get a lot of information here and it's worth kind of recapping some of the things that I've already gone over and showing them visually on the participant list. So the first thing that you can see is which channel someone's on as we've discussed a few times along the way. You can see what channel the interpreter is on. You can also see whether their mic is muted or unmuted. Here's a very important one. You can tell if a person is connected via phone. If you see someone connected with this little phone icon like that, you will know for sure that they are dial in and they will never be able to access interpretation. That's when you have to direct them to log out and log back in using the smartphone app or using their computer. And finally, there's a lot of information available from Zoom itself. So you can go to support.zoom.us. You can also find the answers to a lot of questions on using Zoom for VRI there, as well as other information about using Zoom in general. And finally, watching this training also qualifies for continuing education credit. To earn SIMSE credit, just use the information provided on the screen. Thank you so much for joining and following along and best of luck as you use Zoom for providing interpretation to your local courts.

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Judicial Council of California

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