Okay, so I'm just going to go ahead and get started. Hello and welcome to this training on WebEx 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 Tamara Hilton and I am an attorney and state and federally certified freelance Spanish court interpreter based in Tucson, Arizona, and I'll be your faculty for today. What I'm going to try to do today is to, from the perspective of interpreters, provide you with an understanding of best practices when interpreting for court events using Cisco WebEx. Our goal today is to give you some best practices and information that will help you succeed when using WebEx to provide court interpretation remotely. And during this training, we'll be going over several different topics. We'll talk about, for example, best practices when setting up your remote workstation and equipment that you might be using when interpreting over WebEx, giving you just a basic idea of what you need in order to be successful. And I'll also provide a brief overview of the WebEx platform, including some of the tools that WebEx has that might be useful for court interpreters during remote interpreted events. We'll also discuss how to use the simultaneous interpretation feature. WebEx has a built-in simultaneous interpretation feature that courts can, in fact, use to provide simultaneous interpretation. However, I'm also going to be providing some information about what you need to be aware of when using this feature, as there are some aspects of it that are not entirely designed for court interpreting. So there are ways that we can use to work around those. And we'll also talk about some other ways to provide simultaneous interpretation over WebEx, including how to provide simultaneous interpretation when you're not using the simultaneous feature for whatever reason. You can also use WebEx, of course, to provide consecutive interpretation and site translation. And we'll also talk about how you can use WebEx when you're doing team relay interpreting, as well as when you need to, when the court needs to allow parties to have confidential communications in a courtroom environment virtually. And I'll also go over a few ways to troubleshoot in WebEx. So let's get started. First of all, I want to say, just kind of by way of introduction, that the most important thing for your remote setup is going to be what you are comfortable with. You have a goal, which is to be able to interpret with a good connection, and you will need a headphone, headset, and microphone, and you'll need a computer. And beyond that, there are a lot of different configurations that you can choose, depending on what best suits your needs and your space. It also may be different depending on your court. So some of you may work from home and provide your own interpretation equipment. Some of you may work from the court and be provided with equipment by the court. So the requirements that I am discussing here can apply to any of those configurations. So first of all, one incredibly important thing is that you have a quiet office space free from distractions. So making sure that your space has a door you can close, that you can work without a bunch of background noise coming in, as well as making sure that your own space is confidential so that other people cannot hear what you are doing. Second, it's important to have good lighting so that you can be seen. Court interpreters, unlike conference interpreters, were on screen, so you have to make sure that you can be seen clearly by the court, by the people that you are interpreting for. Some basic rules of thumb. I like to make it simple. I like to keep it easy. You're going to get the best lighting at minimal cost if you can put your desk in front of a window so that you're not backlit, so that you have light coming onto your face. That's the easiest way to resolve any lighting issues. Other ways that people are able to get really good lighting with minimal cost outlay is to take a floor lamp and place that near your desk because that's going to create a reflective light from the ceiling that will illuminate you without shadows. And if you want to get fancy, you can buy a ring light and use that. So I have all three of those options up on screen. Any of those will work, just making sure that you can be seen clearly. Another thing, make sure that your background, you can blur it unless you're ASL, in which case you cannot. But if you're a spoken language interpreter, you can just go ahead and use the platform features to blur your background. You can also use a virtual background. So there are a lot of different virtual backgrounds that are available. You can download and create your own as long as it is professional, if the court allows it. So any of those will be acceptable. Other things that you'll want to make sure you have as an interpreter that you have sufficient space in front of you to take notes, a chair that you're comfortable in, and anything that helps you be comfortable. All right, now into some more technical specifications. So basically, you can use pretty much any later model computer or laptop in order to interpret. We prefer a desktop just because as an interpreter, you're going to be plugging in microphones, headphones, things like that. And so a desktop gives you more ports to be able to connect. It also allows for a larger monitor or multiple monitors pretty easily. So a desktop computer is generally your best bet. You can also get kind of more power for your money when you're computer shopping if you're buying a desktop as opposed to a laptop. The one thing that we really don't recommend for interpreters are tablets and smartphones. And one of the main reasons for that is that, first of all, it just doesn't give you enough screen real estate to really work. You are not able to connect a good camera, a good microphone conveniently to those devices and be certain that they're going to work every time. Often you're limited to Bluetooth technology. Some phones limit your ability to charge and have headphones connected at the same time. So overall, these just aren't a good pick for your primary device. Rule of thumb takeaway is pretty much any normal laptop, normal desktop computer is going to be fine for your purposes. Okay, so coming to that internet connection that I was talking about. So the first thing is that you want to use high speed hardwired. That means plugging an ethernet cord directly to your router internet connection. When I say high speed, okay, so technically the specifications for WebEx is that you need to at least have a download and upload speed of five megabits per second. In my practical experience, when I use speeds that low, I have a lot of challenges. If there's any fluctuations at all, my connection tends to lag. So I would tend to go a bit higher if that's available to you in your area. And also keep in mind that when you buy internet service, a lot of providers only list their download speed. So for example, Xfinity, you might have a 200 megabit connection download, and that is what is advertised. But when you actually go through the steps to purchase it, you'll be able to see what the upload speed is. And it may only be five or 10 megabits. And you only get that 30 or 40 megabit upload speed when you get into the gigabit speeds that Xfinity offers. So keep an eye on that and be aware that both of those connection speeds are important, even if your internet service provider, your ISP, only advertises the download speed. But your upload speed is actually essential, given that download is what you're receiving and upload is what you're sending out, in this case, to the court. You can check that with your current connection. So if you just go to this link here, speedtest.net, and you can click to check and see what your actual upload and download speeds are. That's another important thing to be aware of, because a lot of times, you're not always getting what you're paying for, maybe because of issues with how your internet was installed, maybe degradation of your cables since your internet was installed. So it's important to keep an eye on that to do regular speed tests. And if it drops below what you're supposedly paying for, you might want to call your ISP. They always come out, and they will always check it, and they pretty much always can fix it, in my experience. I've done it countless times since everything went remote. So that's something to be aware of, that even though you're paying for it, you may not get it unless everything is in perfect working order. And just like I was saying on the last slide, we really don't recommend Wi-Fi and cellular data, because these tend to be weaker. If you are on Wi-Fi, the further away you get from your router, the lower that connection speed is going to go. It is going to drop, and it can fluctuate. So just by being on Wi-Fi, you can drop or cut out. So it's best to be hardwired. And you can have the same issue with cellular data. So atmospheric conditions and other factors can affect how strong your cell signal is. So even if you have a pretty fast 5G cellular connection, that can drop pretty suddenly, which can really impact court operations. So when at all possible, we strongly recommend that you make sure that your workspace allows you to connect with an Ethernet cable. Another thing that will really help with your bandwidth is to restart your computer every time before you log on for the day to court. There are a lot of background processes on your computer that can use the internet, as well as just the fact that the background processes that your computer is engaging in because you have other applications open or have had other applications open, those will use up the memory on your computer. And that is going to take from the hardware capacity that your computer has to run the virtual connection to the court. And that can cause you to cut out and have issues as well. So to improve your connection, you can actually just restart your computer, close out applications, and start fresh. So moving from the internet and its mysteries to hardware. So we'll start with headsets. That's usually the thing that people ask about first. You want to look for a headset with a noise-canceling microphone. I know it says noise-canceling headset on the screen. What I'm actually talking about more than anything is the microphone. So what you want is a microphone that is advertised as noise-canceling. And this is accomplished in a variety of different ways. But the essential feature of a noise-canceling microphone is that it prioritizes your voice over any other sounds that might be present in your background. And that's going to make for a clearer communication with you and the court. You can also get headphones that are noise-canceling to isolate you from your space. Some interpreters really like that. Others really don't. So that one is up to you. But the noise-canceling microphone is going to be very essential for your work. The other thing is to look for a headset that connects with USB. But do not just save yourself a ton of trouble and do not buy a headset that connects with a 3.5 millimeter jack. And what I mean by that is something that looks like this, right? This is a 3.5 millimeter jack. So get something that connects with a USB, not that. And the main reason for that is just that a lot of computers, that port degrades. It doesn't read both the microphone and headphone portion of your device simultaneously. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes for platforms like Zoom, WebEx, Teams, any of those to recognize that you have a microphone attached that is separate from your built-in laptop or desktop microphone. So for all of those reasons, it's really a lot easier and will be easier for you to make sure that you're properly connected if you use a USB-based headset rather than an analog 3.5 millimeter connection. Finally, I know it seems very, very convenient, but do not use earbuds. Do not use Apple earbuds or any other sort of Bluetooth earbud that kind of comes off the shelf for consumer use. There are some very good, somewhat expensive call center type headsets that are designed for your use with Bluetooth, and I would say those are probably pretty safe. But the thing is about the earbuds that come for your phone that you can also connect to your computer is that the sound quality is going to be fairly low. Some platforms compensate for this better than others. WebEx is not one of those platforms. So you're not going to sound great if you are on earbuds that you bought for your phone that you're now using for your computer. If you want to use Bluetooth technology, then make sure that you're using something that's kind of professionally designed for video conferencing that has a headset and a boom microphone and just happens to be wireless hands free, that kind of thing. OK, so let's talk about some other equipment. If you choose to use a separate standalone microphone, that's what I'm actually using right now. I'm not using a headset, but you can use a separate standalone microphone. And again, you would have to pair that with headphones. So if you're actually interpreting, which I'm not, you would actually want to pair this with headphones, use the two together. That's a completely acceptable option, making sure that, again, the microphone connects via USB, not 3.5 millimeter jack. So make sure that these things are compatible with your computer. You may have to buy adapters. Some of the within the last five or six years, Apple laptops only have USB-C ports, whereas most of the best microphones and headsets only come with USB 2.0. So if you have that problem, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't have that problem, you might have no idea what I'm talking about. But if you do have that problem, fortunately, for about seven dollars on Amazon, you can get adapters. So I recommend those if you have that issue, like when you're shopping for headsets and microphones and you find that they all have a connection that doesn't fit in your laptop. That's when you just look for an adapter and it'll be really simple. OK, what else do we have? Webcam. So here's another thing that I, you know, I'm not trying to make your life exceptionally complicated. The webcam that comes with your computer is most often going to be acceptable. Especially the ones that come with laptop computers, desktops, unless you have an all in one. Often they don't have a webcam, but if you have a laptop computer, it has a webcam and that webcam works great. If you prefer that, that's fine. You can also offer an external webcam if your webcam quits working, which has happened. They're actually very cheap in a lot of Windows devices, particularly the webcam is not a very durable piece of hardware and sometimes it fails when the rest of the computer continues working. And that's when you may have to buy an external webcam. Again, a reason to have a lot of ports available to you is because we're connecting all of these peripherals, including a microphone, a headset, a webcam, all of these different things. So again, the least expensive option is to go with what you already have that's built in. If you want higher quality or if you don't have a working one, then just go ahead and pick up an external webcam. There are other things that can really make your life easy when you are interpreting remotely. One of the things that I really like that has changed my entire work life when it comes to remote is having two monitors. And that way I can have the virtual meeting kind of on one monitor front and center. And then maybe I put a web browser with dictionaries or other information, other materials, maybe a copy of the complaint or other things that might be helpful during my interpretation. I put that up on the other monitor. That also might include when we get into team interpreting, it might include a text window, a WhatsApp window or something like that, where I'm communicating with my partner. That way I can have two different screens. I have lots of space to work and it helps me kind of quickly find things if I need it while I'm interpreting, while keeping the court kind of front and center on my main screen. Some people really like note taking devices like notables and things like that. Those can be really helpful. I pretty much still use the standard pen and paper. But a lot of interpreters, as they've embraced digital technology, especially with remote and even before, have very successfully used different types of note taking devices. You may need a separate computer for a back channel with your partner. So if you need to communicate via voice with your partner for some reason, you may need another computer or phone. You may, when using simultaneous, as we'll discuss, it may be helpful for you to actually have two devices in the meeting, one that's designated as interpreter and one that is not. And for that purpose, you may need a second device. So these are all the types of things that you might have, supplementary depending on your needs as an interpreter. All right. So in terms of software, you'll want to download and install, first of all, the WebEx client. You can use it from the browser. Absolutely. However, it is a lot more challenging. The features are not as straightforward and easy to identify as when you're just in the WebEx app. So if you're going to be interpreting it all on WebEx, I highly recommend that you just go to WebEx.com and download the client and install it. You can create an account, which will allow you to make some of the adjustments to profiles and things like that, that I'll discuss a little bit later on that will help the court identify you. But first and foremost, just make sure you have the app actually installed on your computer so you are not joining the meetings via your browser. You can also practice going into Webex, doing a test meeting. So we've put the link here for you. So you can just go to webex.com and go into a test meeting. And then just keep up to date. Mostly your computer's going to automatically update your Webex app, but occasionally something big will happen and you'll need to completely uninstall it and then reinstall the Webex. If you ever have trouble, by the way, with your Webex app, one really good way to fix that is often just to uninstall the app and completely reinstall it. So that's kind of your first step. So make sure you download the appropriate software. Next, make sure that your devices are, this sounds like such a no brainer, but make sure that your devices are actually charged or plugged in. This is easier to mess up with laptops. So make sure that's ready to go. So you don't have to stop the meeting to charge your device and make sure you're close to an outlet. All right. So from there, let's go ahead and take an overview of Webex. So I'm going to go through all of these different features. What I'm going to do. Okay, so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to come into Webex here and I'm going to show you some of these features. So first of all, this is a meeting that I've set up. You can see that I've got a few participants here. I've got our clerk, I've got Spanish interpreter, me, I've got another Spanish interpreter here, and I'll get into the interpreter feature somewhat as well. But first of all, here's your basic unmute and mute. So it's right there at the bottom. And again, I'm in the app, I'm not in the browser, but if you were in the browser, it would be a similar look. So mute, unmute. If you wanted to start, you could do that. If you wanted to start video, it's this button here. And I want to show you some of your audio options. So I have a lot here and this is very overwhelming. I apologize for that. But fundamentally this little arrow here is how you would change your microphone and speaker. So if I wanted to change my microphone to a headset, microphone, my Sennheiser, then I would click there. And I would do the same up on the speaker. So if I wanted to change my, so it'd be in my headphone, audio, Sennheiser, main audio there. So those are my audio options. I also want to show you settings. So if we go here, then we can actually test to make sure that we've chosen the right setting. So I'll test here. And if I can hear it, then that means I've chosen the right audio. And I would also test here. So I would say a few things and then it'll play back through my speakers. So those are your fundamental kind of settings here. I always do this to this day, every single time before I go into a court hearing, I test my audio before I actually enter that meeting. And this is how. Okay, and then as far as your video, I'm gonna show you video settings. It's not connected to a camera right now because I'm using another device. But, so I'm not able to actually connect to a camera to show you. All right, but if you wanted to change the camera that you're using or your background, these are your options here. So you would go from the video option to change what camera your device is using. And you would go to background to change your virtual background or to blur your background. All right, so let's X out of that. And so now I have the share screen option. So this is actually what you're going to see most of the time in court because you're not going to be able to share screen. So if it were enabled, like let me go ahead and enable that. Okay, now I should be able to share and it's going to show all the different windows that I have available. And I would choose one and then share screen. Again, as an interpreter, you're very unlikely to actually need to share. I've never needed to do it as an interpreter, but it is an option. Second, as you can see here, I actually already had the participants list open, but down here in the right, that's again, the same on browser as on the app. You'll click on the participants list and this will show you everyone who's in the meeting. And you can actually tell some really important things about who's in the meeting as well. Here, you can see that you have a little headset next to both of these names. That means they're on a computer. This one here, you can tell that this participant is actually on a tablet or a cell phone. And that's important for when you're giving instructions to people who have joined the meeting on how to use the interpretation feature because the instructions for how to connect to interpretation, as we'll see, are going to differ depending on whether they're accessing the interpretation on a tablet or a computer. So here's how you can tell what kind of device they're on just by looking at that. Something else that we're going to take a look at a little bit later is editing. Actually, I'll just go ahead and do it now. There's no reason why not to. I can show you how to change your display name. And so you could, most courts are going to want you to start with Spanish interpreter or Mandarin interpreter or Vietnamese interpreter. And then you'll just put your name right after that. So that's the way to do that. And you would just save that. And you can see that it updated there. So just right click, change display name, and then type in what you want your display name to be and then hit save. So that's how to do that. And you have to do it from the participants list. So you're first going to open participants and then you're going to change your name. The other thing to do here is your chat. So I always open chat right away because often the courtroom clerk will write me, sometimes they'll send me useful information in like the case caption or something like that, or they'll tell me that maybe I'm not going to be called for a little bit. So often they'll chat me here. And one thing that's important to realize is that you can chat privately and you have to make sure to select the person. In WebEx, they can chat you privately and you have to select it to chat them back privately. So before you send a message, choose who it's going to go to, whether it's going to go to everyone or one particular person. So that's pretty straightforward there. Another really useful thing that I like to do is right now I've got layout on grid. So if I go up here in the upper right and I click grid, you can also choose stack and that's going to put the whoever's speaking or whoever was last speaking kind of front and center here. But one thing that I really like to do in a full courtroom often, especially in hybrid proceedings, you will see a whole bunch of videos of everyone who is either waiting for a hearing or in some way participating, and that might be a lot. And then you'll have one tiny little video that's the judge or the courtroom. So what I like to do is move to stage. So I will choose a person to move to stage. So like maybe the courtroom clerk, maybe the video for the courtroom, and then I can make it large and I can see more people. I can have more than one person on stage as well here in this simulation because I only have three participants. That's not really going to be practical, but if I have, a lot of times I'll have maybe three videos that are important to me to see, the judge, a witness, the courtroom as a whole, maybe a counsel, and I'll move all of those to stage. And then everybody else will be just kind of across the top here. So this move to stage feature is really important. And then if I want them off stage, you can do what I just did. So move to stage, and then again, clicking on those dots for remove from stage. And so that's similar to pinning in Zoom, except that in WebEx, you can automatically actually just pin as many people as you want. So moving to stage. All right. I think those are the main things. There are reactions, although again, I think that the main thing to say about reactions for interpreters is not to use them. So you can raise your hand, you can lower your hand, and then use any of these reactions. But again, as an interpreter, I've never used reactions. And I think the main thing is to be aware that they're there so that you don't use them. So those are our fundamental features for a WebEx overview. So let's come back, and then I'll kind of get into using the simultaneous feature a little bit. So let me bring that back. Okay. All right, the WebEx simultaneous feature. First of all, and this is going to apply whether or not you're actually going to be using the simultaneous feature, I'm just gonna talk about joining the meeting as an interpreter. So normally there'll be an email sent from the court that will give you a link, and then you'll just be able to click on that link and join the meeting. If you have not downloaded the app and you are using the browser, you can actually just go to webex.com and paste the link, join using the meeting information, and then paste the link from the court or the meeting number, meeting ID that the court gave you. Again, it's so much easier to just download the app and use that. So I recommend that, but those are kind of two options. So clicking the link and that will either launch your app or launch your browser, or if you're having trouble, go straight to webex.com and then you can use that information straight from the WebEx website. Next, you're gonna wanna make sure that you identify yourself as an interpreter. The court may not be aware which interpreter has been sent. So when they're looking for you from the participants list, it's extremely helpful if your display name actually starts with language interpreter. So I'm just gonna recap that. I know I showed it to you a moment ago live, but I'm gonna recap how that looks on the slides here. So this option is actually, this one will blanket change your screen name. And this is helpful for a lot of people that maybe don't enjoy technology or prefer to just fix something once and have that be the way it always is. So if you open a WebEx account and you have your own WebEx account, free to do by the way, so no worries about that, you can actually just log in to your profile and change your display name permanently for any time that you are signed into the WebEx app. So to do that, you will log into your WebEx account, you will go to your profile. So here, click on profile, and then it'll give you this. And then you can change your name. So put Spanish interpreter, Mandarin interpreter, Vietnamese interpreter here, and then put your name after that in the last name box. And then here, your display name, you can set it up like this, Mandarin interpreter, John Doe. And then hit update, and that will be your display name in WebEx. So when you open WebEx in the morning before you log into court, make sure you sign into the app on your computer, and then you can go ahead, and then you'll be able to, just in any meeting that you click into, we'll pick up this display name. You won't have to change it in the app by remembering to open the participant list and edit the display name because this will be your name. Option two is what I just showed you. So you would first open participants list, and then you would edit display name. So clicking that, and then just type in what you want your name to be here and click save. That's all you need to do. So if you don't mind doing that every time you join a meeting, that's also an option. Okay, so now what you all came for, using the WebEx simultaneous feature. So you might be pre-assigned as the interpreter. Most courts are probably, in my experience, most courts are not gonna do that just because the kind of mix of the interpreter team changes from day to day. So what you're going to actually see is that you're just given a link and you're going to show up. If you do happen to be pre-assigned as an interpreter and you log into the WebEx app before you go, then you will automatically show up in the meeting assigned as an interpreter. But you have to be using the same email that the court has, and you have to be signed into your WebEx application for that to work. If that doesn't happen, that's completely fine. The host can assign you once you're in the meeting. Okay, so here's a look at the interpreter interface, and I'm gonna show it to you live. The basic, to understand what's happening here, right? So when you join as an interpreter to do consecutive, you're just like any other participant. Everyone hears you equally, just like you hear them, they hear you. However, if you are using the simultaneous feature, you get a separate pair of audio channels that you speak into. And if anyone else on the meeting happens to be listening to those audio channels, that's when they hear you. So if you're speaking, for example, to the Spanish channel, only people that have selected for their listening audio to be hearing the Spanish channel, only those people will be hearing you. So you can change that. You can switch between English and Spanish, English and Mandarin, English and Vietnamese, English and whatever other language is your target language. But only people who have chosen one of your two channels affirmatively will be able to hear you. So that's important to understand. Other controls you'll see as the interpreter is hand off to next. So that's if your team interpreting and you want to signal to your partner within the WebEx platform that it's their turn, they're up, you can use that. I don't find it extremely helpful either for court or conference, honestly. I find for court, honestly, I just use my video. So I'll just signal to my partner to switch or maybe I'll be off video and then I come on video to let my partner know that I'm ready. Anything except using that. So honestly, that's not extremely useful. So you can find other ways to signal to your partner. But the things that are extremely important are understanding how this toggle works between English and your target language. So selecting your language channel, selecting your source language, your input listening language. So most of the time that's just going to be, as an interpreter, you default hear everybody else. So the floor. If you wanted to listen to your partner, you would be able to do that. You would just have to listen to the foreign language channel. You'd have to select your source language. So that's right here. So right now it defaults to original audio. So that's just everyone in the meeting. But if you wanted to listen to your partner, you would select a different language. And yeah, so that's basically that. And what I want to do right now is because I think that will be much more helpful if I actually show this to you. So I'm going to go ahead and go back and designate this device that's on screen here as the interpreter. So you can see how that looks. So I'm going to start interpretation right now. All right, and so the first thing that you see as the interpreter is that you've been designated. This is not going to happen by surprise. You will get a notification on your screen. So you can either X out of that or you can view interpretation options which will take you straight to your controls. And so you can see how, first of all, I can toggle back and forth. So when people are speaking Spanish and I want to interpret to English simultaneously, I'm here. When people are speaking English and I want to interpret to Spanish simultaneously, it's here. The other controls that I was showing you on the PowerPoint a moment ago are here. So you can see that. So I can choose, I want to show you something. I want you to notice something here. So right now I'm speaking to the Spanish channel, but if I opt to listen to the Spanish channel, notice how it automatically changes me to English. So I can change it back and continue listening to Spanish, but I just wanted to point that out just so you know, because that can cause errors if you are using this to listen to your partner, but you are supposed to be interpreting to the Spanish channel when your turn comes up. Notice also that when I have Spanish selected as the channel I'm listening to, meaning I'm listening to my partner, this slider exists. So if I want to move the slider all the way to original audio, I'm not going to hear my partner. And so that's, it's kind of helpful to do this, I think. So for example, if it's my turn, I just slide it all the way over to original audio. I leave this on Spanish. When it's not my turn, when my partner's up, maybe I slide it all the way to interpreter or I balance it here so I can kind of hear the court as well as my partner to get a feel for, you know, if I need to help her with technology or terminology, maybe technology, actually, maybe she cuts out. So I need to let her know that the court can't hear her or the LEP cannot hear her. So I'll slide back and forth here. So basically these are the fundamental functions for the interpreter. So let me X out of that. And I'll come back to my PowerPoint here. Okay. So from the host side, but the host can start or manage interpretation from the globe icon, usually at the beginning of the meeting before interpretation has started. So there's three dots that you can see here on the screen and you click on that and then you'll get this menu. And if they don't see that, that just means interpretation isn't active on the meeting, they will not be able to designate you. If that is not there, then they need to do something. They need to close out of the meeting, go into their profile and add interpretation to that meeting. So start interpretation, and then they can add and remove interpreters. So how they do that is after they click start, they can add interpreters. So I'm going to go ahead and add a new interpreter. It's after they click start interpretation, they will choose the language of the interpreter and then they will add interpreters in the meeting there. From the listener side, when you're connecting to interpretation on your computer, you would select the globe icon. This will appear in the lower left-hand corner of the screen and you select the language channel that you want and you use the volume slider to adjust towards interpreter, towards original audio. And then you'll be able to hear the interpreter. You can also control the level that you want to hear the interpreter as balanced against the floor with this, with the slider here. If you are on a cell phone, so you're going to select the three dots and then you're going to scroll down to select interpretation right here. And then you're going to select your language channel. So maybe Spanish, and then just as you can on a computer, you can use the volume slider to adjust the volume of the interpreter balanced against the floor. So if you're on an Android, there's going to be an additional step as compared to iPhone users. So you would have to actually go to advanced. So you have to switch tabs essentially. So after you've clicked on the three dots, you need to change tabs to advanced, and then you can access interpretation that way. So everything else is going to be the same as on iPhone after that. But unfortunately, if you're an Android user, you have that additional step of changing tabs. All right, so let me demonstrate this from a listener's perspective. And so here it says that you're assigned to original audio and you can change your interpretation settings here. So this is again, this is what it looks like on a computer. So when you click on the glow, you can select either of these channels. It's as simple as that. So if you're needing Spanish interpretation, click there. It defaults you to this balance, which I think is pretty ideal. You can hear the court in the background, but you're mostly going to be hearing the interpreter. If your listener finds that distracting, they can slide it all the way to interpreter or just a little bit back. That's what I would recommend. They'll barely hear the court, but they'll be able to hear the court if the interpreter stops, for example. Or of course they can go, they can stop, choose to stop hearing the interpreter temporarily just by moving the slider all the way to the left. So that, and that is basically it. It is that simple for desktop users. Okay, so I also want to talk about some other interpretation methods on Webex. First of all, you can certainly do simultaneous even when the simultaneous feature is not enabled. I'll talk about how in just a moment. And as you have intuited, no doubt if you have not done it, you can always interpret consecutively or do site translation in Webex without any special, without doing anything special. So the first method for doing simultaneous when you don't have the simultaneous feature enabled is what we call dual channel architecture. So what you're doing is you're having the person who needs interpretation using two devices and the interpreter is also using two devices. So what's going to happen is the interpreter is going to be connected to the Webex. The LEP ideally, the person who needs your interpretation is also connected to Webex via computer, okay? So both people start connected to Webex via computer or via cell phone, right? They're on their smartphone app. And then with a separate device, separate for both people. So both the interpreter and the individual needing interpretation must have two devices. Then the interpreter dials the person needing interpretation on their phone. So basically just using the phone as a transmitter. If you're using your phone like this, I highly recommend dialing star 67 to keep your number private. The other thing, here we say maintain interpreter ethics. That's because this method of interpreting can be a little bit fraught. And that's because you're essentially creating a private channel of communication between the interpreter and the LEP court user. So make sure that whatever you do is transparent. If you hear something through that line, interpret it. Sight translations, let's talk about that. Very simple on Webex. Normally what happens is that court staff will just share a document and then ask you to sight translate the portions that the court wishes you to read. So that's very simple. It just shows up on screen and you interpret that. Sometimes the document is emailed to me ahead of time or during the hearing, and then I sight translate off of that. So that's an option as well. Okay, and for consecutive interpretation, that's the very intuitive thing that we've always done as interpreters. Basically, it's a turn taking. So the interpreter will interpret and then pause. Someone will speak, the interpreter will interpret again. So coming to team and relay interpreting on Webex, I've kind of hinted at the way some of this works as I've been going along. So for court purposes, we recommend using chat and video to hand off. Now, like I mentioned that there was a handoff button, but in reality, it's not necessary for court interpreters to use this. So whether you're interpreting consecutively or simultaneously, maybe you text your partner to find out if they're ready, and then when they hand it off to you, maybe visually, you take over. One method that I really like is for the interpreter who's not working, the passive interpreter, to just have their video off while the active interpreter is on screen. And then when you've agreed maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes, when it reaches that point, I, the non-working interpreter, I come on screen and maybe I wave at my partner if they don't see me or I send them a text. And then I go like this and they may give me a thumbs up or they may simply turn off their camera. And that's how I know when to start. So that's a really effective way to kind of hand off between partners. And that works whether you're doing simultaneous or consec. And the, like I said, it's possible, of course, to use a separate chat back channel and I highly recommend it. So when it says chat here, you can use the Webex chat, but I have had partners that have accidentally chatted the entire court when they wanted to chat me. And so I recommend having a separate chat app, like using WhatsApp on your desktop or using text messages, if you're comfortable with that, on your phone to reach your partner. So make sure that you can communicate with your partner in some way outside of the meeting. We call that a back channel. So setting up, planning with your partner to have a back channel, getting their phone number so that you can communicate with them during the meeting outside of the video platform. I'm going to show you very briefly how this handoff to next thing works. So basically, again, I don't think you'll really use it, but it's worth at least seeing in images how this works. So here's the handoff button, handoff to next. And then the other interpreter gets a dialogue box saying that they've been requested to interpret. And there you go. And then they hit okay. And the original interpreter will get a notification that their request has been accepted. And the other interpreter will get a notification saying that they can start interpreting. But all of that is really unnecessary because all you have to do is mute and unmute. And so if you signal your partner and you let them know that you're ready for them to start and they acknowledge that, you can kind of avoid all of this notification back and forth. All right, partner monitoring and support. So as I hinted at before, as we were discussing, it is possible to use, if you are using simultaneous, it is possible for you to listen to your partner from within WebEx. If you choose not to do this, it is easy to monitor your partner also through a phone call or through a separate device, maybe FaceTime or a WhatsApp call, anything like that. And we definitely do that for conference. We can also do it for court, but you can use the WebEx feature itself just to monitor. So like I was showing you previously when I demonstrated the interpreter feature, you can change the source language. So original audio, just change that to your source language, to the language channel your partner's on, probably Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin, whatever it is, and then you can listen to them. But make sure again that you are aware that it will switch your language channel output. So it'll change you to English if you're listening to your partner, and then you have to switch it back. And making sure as well that you, again, have a way to communicate with your partner, use a back channel. So it needs to be either by text, you can use a separate video connection, a separate call, a phone call, just audio if you'd like. You can also use the chat within the WebEx platform, again, being careful to making sure that you don't chat everybody when you just need to chat your partner. Okay, and now moving to relay interpreting, which is probably one of the cooler features, I think, of WebEx, that it allows when you're using the simultaneous feature, it allows you to operate pretty seamlessly with more than one language being spoken. So the relay interpreters have to have a language in common, and this happens a lot when you're dealing with indigenous languages, so of Spanish-speaking countries. So for example, we're using Acateco here, and so you might have an English-Spanish interpreter, and then you might have an interpreter that only speaks Acateco in Spanish, and so they may need to interpret to Spanish, and that requires the use of an English-Spanish interpreter. So you'll have your English-Spanish interpreter interpreting simultaneously into Spanish, and then you have your Acateco-Spanish interpreter interpreting simultaneously to Acateco, and the WebEx simultaneous feature allows for that to happen, so that your LEP can listen just to Acateco. So first of all, remember that your source language is original audio, and it's going to default to that, so interpreter one, our English-Spanish interpreter, they are just going to listen to the court, so that's original audio. I don't need to listen to anything else. I'm the English-Spanish interpreter, so I'm just going to listen to the floor, and then my Spanish-Acateco interpreter, they need to listen to me in Spanish. So I'm interpreting to Spanish. They need to listen to me in Spanish, so they're going to select Spanish as their listening language, and here you can see that the arrow for them is pointing to other, and that's just because WebEx does not have any of the Mayan languages or any of the indigenous languages in Spanish-speaking countries. They don't have those available on the platform, so a solution is just to choose other, and then you have to tell your Acateco or Cachiquel-speaking LEP to choose other for their listening language. So that way, this happens pretty seamlessly. I interpret to Spanish. My colleague, the Acateco-Spanish interpreter, listens to me in Spanish and interprets to Acateco, and then the LEP, if it's going the other direction, your Acateco interpreter is going to listen to other, their source language is other, and they are going to interpret to Spanish, and then I am going to hear that in Spanish, and I'm going to interpret to English. So this is, again, we virtually never do simultaneous interpretation from a foreign language into English in court, because normally that's for testimony, and we would want that to be done consecutively, but it is possible to go in the reverse. So just so you know, that is how that would work. You would have your Acateco interpreter interpreting to Spanish, and then my Spanish-English interpreter will interpret to English. So let's turn to now what we call confidential communications. So often in real life court, attorneys and their clients need to speak confidentially. So what happens in that situation in real life, of course, they just step into another room, they turn on the husher, whatever they need to do. In a virtual environment, the most common thing for a court to do is to put the attorney and their client, sometimes with the interpreter, into a breakout room. However, the issue is that there are no breakout sessions in Webex available if you have simultaneous interpretation activated. So if that's the case, if you've turned on simultaneous interpretation for the meeting, and an attorney needs to speak to a client, then they just need to have a plan for a separate phone call or a separate kind of virtual environment where they can connect away from the court. For the interpreter, the important thing to be aware of is that since you're probably still going to be in the main meeting while you're working with the attorney and the client, you just have to make sure that your camera is off and your mic is deactivated in that main meeting so that you don't leak any of that confidential communication into the courtroom. Okay, so now some basic troubleshooting. So I'll talk about some of the main issues, and I'm gonna focus primarily on the simultaneous side of things. So as we just talked about, there are no breakout sessions available to users when simultaneous interpretation is enabled. Webex has said that they are working on making that possible because that is very important to courts, but for now, that's just the way it is. There are no custom channels available, and that just means it's pretty straightforward. The solution is pretty straightforward to that. Like we said, if Webex does not have the language you need on your list, just choose other or any other language on the list. It really doesn't matter. So just choose something, but make sure that your LEP knows what to select. And finally, hosts and co-hosts. You cannot make a host or a co-host into an interpreter. So that means that interpreters cannot, even if you are very familiar with how interpretation works in Webex, you can't assign yourself. So that means that the courtroom clerk or someone else in the court needs to be adept at handling Webex and assigning interpreters so that they can do it themselves. So let's get into some more kind of, what I think are more serious issues. Like these are fairly minor issues, I think, when it comes to using simultaneous interpreting, but here's one that I think is a significant issue that interpreters really need to plan for and courts need to plan for. First of all, once you are made interpreter, if you are made interpreter, a simultaneous interpreter, you cannot from your device, your single device that has been designated as interpreter, you cannot address the meeting at large. And at first you think, well, is that a big deal? Yes, it actually is, because that means that people cannot hear you unless they choose your channel. So if you have to give instructions to the LEP, for example, on how to choose their language, choose a language channel so that they can hear you, well, once you're designated as interpreter, you cannot do that. So the main solution to this is to have the interpreter join on two devices. So one device is designated as interpreter, and the other device is the interpreter's device for just addressing the meeting at large. Another one that I think is very important is that a party may dial into Webex on the phone. So not using the app on their smartphone to distinguish these concepts, someone can actually join Webex just dialing in, and then they're on a phone connection, an audio only connection. Well, people who are on a phone audio only connection cannot choose a language channel. And so that means they will not be able to access simultaneous interpretation at all. It is possible that if they have a second phone, it is, they can listen to the court on one, and they can listen to the interpreter on the other. That's possible. And in these situations, sometimes too, I've just had the judge for expediency's sake, just tell the person to log out of the Webex and have the interpreter call them. And that way, again, it's like a little bit ethically fraught because then I'm the only connection between them and the court. So keep that in mind. But that is also an option. As an interpreter, of course, you want to make sure that you let the court know if you're having difficulties hearing. If you cannot hear well enough to do simultaneous interpretation, one of our ethical canons is that we need to report impediments to our interpretation. So feel free to do that. If you want to, here's the thing too, if the court hasn't selected a language channel and again, you are only on one device, they will not hear you if you are trying to report impediments. So again, it's best to be on a second device so that you can unmute on the second device and just let the court know that there is an issue. If the court does happen to be, if the judge or the attorneys do happen to be on the English channel, then you can toggle over to let them know that there's an issue. You can also, maybe this is one use case for reactions. So if you're struggling and nobody is paying attention to you and cannot hear you, then you can use your maybe raise hand reaction to see if you can get them to take notice of what might be happening. Identifying audio and visual issues. Okay, so I like to use the participant list for troubleshooting. Here, what I'm gonna show you here, like remember how I was, earlier I was showing you the participant list and letting you know, okay, well, you can look at these icons to see what kind of device someone is on. So for example, if someone is on a phone, this one I didn't show you earlier. If someone is on a phone, they'll have a little phone icon. And that way you can tell that not only are they on an audio only connection, maybe with just their video off, but actually they dialed in. So you know that that person is not going to be able to access simultaneous just by looking at the participants list. You might also see that someone is a smartphone user. And that way you can tailor your instructions to them. You say, okay, so they're on a smartphone, they're on a tablet. This is how I'm going to tell them to access interpretation. And of course the top one that I showed you earlier is just a shows a headset. That means they're on a computer. You can tell them to look for the globe. If you want to know what language channel an interpreter is speaking into, maybe your partner, you can see from the participants list that there is an interpreter designated and they are speaking, they're listening to English and they are interpreting to Spanish. You can also see whether someone has their camera or microphone activated. Here you can see that one person has a little green icon showing that their microphone is activated and they're using it. Sometimes it may also be red, meaning that they're muted. So you can look at the participant list and just see that they're muted. You can also see if they have their camera activated. Other information that you might be able to access in terms of troubleshooting, you can go to help.webex.com. You can also find answers to questions on using WebEx for RSI or VRI within those WebEx help pages. So there are all different topics that WebEx has made available to users through their help site. And coming to the end here, so I'll just conclude by saying thank you for joining us today and watching this training also qualifies you for continuing education credit to earn SIMSE credit. You just use the information here on screen. Here's your code, 7113. And again, thank you so much for joining.

court interpreters

Cisco WebEx

remote interpretation

workstation setup

necessary equipment

audio and video settings

simultaneous interpretation

confidential communications

team interpreting

troubleshooting tips