Using interpretation in Microsoft Teams
If you are holding a meeting with attendees who requested interpretation in different languages, here are the steps to take to set up the meeting with Microsoft Teams.
The first step will be to contact your colleague in charge of the WOSM Language Team to ask if volunteers are available to interpret at the time and date of your meeting.
Make sure that you ask long enough in advance, the more time we have to find volunteers, the more likely we will find some.
Another important point to keep in mind is that Microsoft Teams does not allow interpreters to work in two directions (e.g. interpreting from English into French and from French into English). This has two implications:
- If your meeting is bilingual, you will need to find at least 3 interpreters. 2 interpreters will work from the main language of the meeting into the secondary language, and 1 will work from the secondary language into the main one
- Any meeting with more that 2 languages will only be interpreted in one direction. This means, in the case of WOSM, that only English can be spoken in the main room, with interpretation only from English into the other languages
Once you have decided on the languages and secured interpreters, you can start setting up your meeting
Create your meeting in Teams calendar
On the day of the meeting, we recommend to meet with the interpreters 15 minutes early to make sure you have the time to set them up and start the interpretation.
Don’t forget to show the participants how to access interpretation
Using Live caption in Microsoft Teams
As you can see from this screenshot from a participant’s view, Microsoft Teams allows participants to turn on live-captions for the meeting. As we all know, this can be very interesting for people with hearing impairment, people who have to attend the meeting from a crowded place or simply for those who do not feel completely confident in English.
However, automatic live-caption still has its flaws, in particular when it comes to: speed, accents, filler words (“umm”, “like”, etc.), jargon (words unique to Scouting), abbreviations, acronyms, names.
Here are some piece of advice on how to work best with this feature. Incidentally, being aware of this will also help not only the interpreters if you have some, but also anyone in the room who does not master completely the language you are speaking, regardless if they are using the live-caption.
- Try to reduce your pace as much as possible. Rehearse your speech in advance to make sure that you can fit everything in the time allocated to you, without having to rush. If you can’t, it is better to cut parts of your speech and deliver part of it perfectly, rather than deliver all of it without being fully understood.
- Try as much as possible to use a neutral accent. Again, rehearsing your speech will help you. In any case, don’t hesitate to over-articulate to help the machine catch your words.
- Filler words will all be caught by the machine, and they will be very disturbing for the participants reading the live-caption. Try to force them out of your speech. That is a good exercise for your everyday life also: force yourself to close your mouth after each idea, to prevent any “um” to get out.
- For the abbreviations and acronyms, the advice is very simple: just avoid them. It will take 1 second more to say “National Scout Organization” than “NSO”, but the live-caption with write it properly.
- About names, the machine will never be able to capture them properly. One trick we can use here is to never use a name only. For example, instead of saying: “I will pass the floor to Jim”, we could say: “I will pass the floor to – Mr, Ms, my friend, Dr, our expert, etc. – Jim”, then make a pause. This helps the reader understand that the following word, that will probably be misspelled and not mean anything, is a name.
- Pauses are a very good tool also, that we should use as much as possible. A pause will help the live caption know when to cut the sentences and add the punctuation. It will also help the interpreters, if you have them, to finish their sentence, and it will help the non-proficient speakers in the call to process the information they just received.
Don’t forget to show the participants how to turn on live caption
Finally, here are some helpful tools if you would like to improve your speaking skills. Those three coaching platform offer limited free plans that can already give you some good tips:
Automatic translation of a PowerPoint presentation in Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams offers the participants to translate your presentation into their language if they want to. This can be done as shown on this participant’s view screenshot.
In order for this feature to be enabled, you will first need to create the presentation with PowerPoint. During the meeting, when you want to share your presentation, click on “share”, and instead of selecting “Window”, scroll down to either “PowerPoint live” or “Browse my computer” to share your presentation directly through Teams.
In addition to being able to translate your presentation, the participants will also be able to browse it at their rhythm.
Just like any automatic tool, this automatic translation still suffers some flaws, so here are some tips to make the most out of this tool:
- If you can, don’t use images that contain words. Instead, paste an image and insert the word after.
- Try to avoid abbreviations and acronyms, write the terms in full
- If you write a full sentence (not encouraged in a PPT presentation), write a simple sentence: “Subject – verb – complement.” If you have several ideas, just write several simple sentences instead of one long one.
- Always try to use specific verbs instead of general ones. For example: “cook a meal” instead of “make a meal” ; “practice sport” instead of “do sport”.
- If you write only one word, or a couple of words, without the context of a sentence, double check in a dictionary/thesaurus that it is the exact word that you want to use. If a word has several meanings and the one you want is not among the first meanings, the translation might get it completely wrong.
- Always leave a quite large blank space at the bottom of your slides. English is a short language, and translating into another language is likely to expend the writing and might end up outside the frame.
Don’t forget to show the participants how to use this feature