New technologies do not always bring benefits for everybody. One of the collateral victims of more digitalisation are interpreters. The job of an Interpreter was already difficult in the “old” days of meetings in situ, with interpreters working from booths in the conference room where delegates negotiated EU policies.
Banging the microphone with a pen or crumpling papers next to it, as well as the infamous Larsen effect, have created misery to interpreters for ages.
Since the confinements, the pervasiveness of hybrid working and remote connections, with speakers using poor microphones in noisy rooms, sometimes even in the middle of the street with a mobile phone; compressed sound in IP networks; and occasional peaks of high-intensity noise have made this profession even more arduous.
While these factors affect all staff in EU Institutions, they exhaust interpreters particularly. Many of them report hearing pathologies and increased fatigue since the changes introduced by the confinements.
The Local Staff Committees (LSCs), and particularly the staff representatives at the health and safety committees (CPPT Brussels and CSHT Luxembourg), always ask that labour and health regulations are applied in their entirety and that new working conditions are only introduced following a risk analysis. This has not happened so far for two of the biggest recent changes in the institutions: a massive digitalisation of meetings and the move to open spaces with hot desking (‘dynamic collaborative spaces (DCS)’).
Interpreting conditions are a difficult matter that is not only determined by the specific technology in use. In addition to the quality of equipment used by the speakers, the quality of the network connections, the proportion of local versus remote interaction, and random factors such as the length of interventions by the different speakers influence the auditory stress of each interpreter in a meeting.
The Interpreters Delegation (a body elected directly by all interpreters, subsidiary to the Brussels LSC) has been negotiating for more than a year now with Directorate-General for Interpretation (DG SCIC) management to define rules determining acceptable connection/equipment standards and frequency/exposure time for remote/hybrid meetings.
However, DG SCIC has recently ended the negotiations, claiming that they have collected enough input from the interpreters and that a pilot will be run to test a set of conditions.
The Delegation disagreed and called an Assembly of Interpreters on 14 June 2024, who passed (192 for, 57 against, 21 abstentions) a resolution deploring the decision by DG SCIC, asking for a risk analysis and requesting similar working conditions to those in the European Parliament and the Court of Justice, where approved peripherals are required to organise meetings with interpretation.
Generation 2004 considers that requiring appropriate peripherals and standards is a reasonable starting point to address these problems. It is unacceptable that a professional must interpret a delegate who is speaking in the middle of a noisy train station. The current rules allow interpreters to stop working if this happens, but this puts all the burden of the decision on the individual interpreter. It is perfectly possible that other interpreters in the meeting go on working, creating uncoordinated interruption. The problem should be solved even before the meeting starts.
From the point of view of costs, given the savings introduced by reducing missions and visits by Member States; the potential long-term costs on health for the interpreters; and the image of the Institution; it does not seem abusive that the EU subsidises the provision of certified equipment at least for our most frequent interlocutors.
Member States have their own procurement procedures, but they also have the means to acquire proper equipment if specific standards are defined at European level. It is not a cost; it is an investment.
The resolution of the Interpreters Assembly opens the door to potential “industrial action” (“strike” in plain terms), where interpreters would work “by the book”, de facto boycotting hybrid meetings.
Generation 2004 calls on the administration to come back to the negotiation table with constructive spirit. While Generation 2004 understands the difficulties to find an agreement that is budget-neutral and totally transparent to our interlocutors in Member States, there is simply too much at stake. The Institution cannot keep acting as if digitalisation were totally harmless.
Have you also experienced hearing problems while working? Are you an interpreter with specific views? As usual, we’d be happy to hear from you!
