Amid the Pandemic, Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) Booms

In 2020, COVID-19 forced international conferences worldwide to cancel or move online. Alongside this shift, Remote Simultaneous Interpreting (RSI) leapt from a niche option to an industry focal point: platforms such as Interprefy, Kudo and VoiceBoxer saw their enterprise clients and event counts multiply within the year, with interpreters serving conferences on the other side of the planet without leaving home.

EU institutions were among the earliest large-scale adopters of remote interpreting. After the outbreak, the European Parliament and the European Commission quickly moved to hybrid meeting formats, with interpreters working on remote platforms to keep meetings running in all 24 official languages. This proved that, with the right platform and processes, remote SI quality can meet the demands of the highest-level multilateral meetings.

For interpreters, RSI brings both opportunity and new requirements: network redundancy at the home workstation, headset and microphone quality, and rapport with a remote boothmate are now part of professional competence. For conference organizers, RSI eliminates interpreter travel and equipment shipping, putting simultaneous interpreting within reach of smaller international events.

The industry consensus: even after the pandemic, purely in-person conferencing will not fully return — hybrid meetings will be the norm, and remote interpreting capability will be standard equipment for language service providers.