Russian Telephone Interpreting Over Skype

Talk Russian, the UK-based Russian translation and interpreting company, is now providing telephone interpreting over the popular ‘Skype’ Internet phone service.

Yelena McCafferty, Talk Russian’s Translation and Interpreting Manager, said “We’ve been experimenting with Skype for English-Russian telephone interpreting for some time and our clients who have worked with us on the trial are delighted with it. The call quality is generally excellent and, of course, it’s cheaper than using regular fixed line calls”.

Demand for English-Russian telephone interpreting is increasing steadily as it is a fast and convenient way of communicating with Russian speaking contacts. The standard method is to use three-way conference calls, where the interpreter dials out to the people who are going to take part in the conversation. Until recently, this was only possible through traditional land-lines or mobiles. But this has now changed with the adoption of VOIP (Voice over Internet) and the growth of high-speed Internet services in most major Russian cities.

Yelena added “lots of things have to be in the right place for this to work. All of the people involved in the call must be on the end of fast Internet connections and they must be using head-sets, but with that considered it does work really well”

Other advantages of using Skype include the ability to bring up to 9 people into the call at no extra cost.

Yelena’s promising even more developments for Skype Russian interpreting in the future: “we are working with a software company on a solution which will allow multiple video calls in a teleconference. That’s only available at present on some high-end systems. When that’s up and running, it’ll help get round the only downside to remote interpreting, that people taking part can’t see each other”.

For more information, contact Talk Russian in the UK on 0207 043 6940 or 01205 365108. Email: enquiry@talkrussian.com

Details of Talk Russian's telephone interpreting services can be found here. For more information on Skype visit www.skype.com.

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