Employing a sociological lens and and building on data from interviews with 26 freelance conference interpreters and two focus groups, this book offers a systematic and comprehensive account of freelance conference interpreters’ experiences working in remote interpreting contexts during the COVID pandemic, a period in which standard practices were severely disrupted and dismantled. It traces these interpreters’ adaptation to remote interpreting and the resulting professional losses and gains, while also exploring their return to physical booths in the post-pandemic world. The book takes a global view of the conference interpreting profession and the rise of AI in multilingual communication. It provides a reappraised understanding of how conference interpreting has evolved because of new technologies and offers insights into how the profession can survive in the age of AI. It argues that the social, emotional, moral, and communicative dimensions of interpreting are essential to sustaining the profession amid the growing sense of insecurity surrounding conference interpreting. The book will be of interest for scholars in translation and interpreting studies, language technologies, artificial intelligence, and professional conference interpreting.
