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Expanded Interpretation Services for ICANN68

5 June 2020
By

Interpretation is an important feature of ICANN Public Meetings. To enable broader participation and facilitate the community’s work, ICANN org makes many events, meetings, and content accessible in the six United Nations languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

We are pleased to announce that the upcoming ICANN68 Virtual Policy Forum will once again include two-way interpretation in all six United Nations languages. Additionally, Portuguese will be available for Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) sessions. This means that the community can participate in much of ICANN68 in their native language.

Converting an in-person ICANN Public Meeting to a virtual format adds another level of complexity to what is already one of the more complicated components of these events. Usually, the interpretation team is comprised of ICANN’s language experts, head interpreters, and an extended team of contracted interpreters from around the world. The entire team conducts its work from the meeting site. Due to the current pandemic, it is not possible for the team to be physically in the same space for ICANN68.

For the Virtual Policy Forum, the Language Services and Meeting Technical Services teams will utilize a Remote Simultaneous Interpretation (RSI) platform to support the increased remote language services offering. The expanded language services are an enhancement to what was offered at the ICANN67 Virtual Community Forum and will be available for all ICANN68 sessions with interpretation.

Community members who plan to use simultaneous interpretation services in their preferred language will need to download and install the application Congress Rental Network on their mobile device. A demonstration of the interpretation platform will be held during the ICANN68 Prep Sessions. This is an opportunity for the community to familiarize and test the interpretation platform. To attend the webinar, please register here.

We thank the community for your patience and flexibility as we have navigated these new logistical challenges. We wish everyone a successful ICANN68 meeting.

Don’t forget to sign up and join one of the two Interpretation Platform webinars scheduled for Monday 8 June 2020 at 12:00 and 22:00 UTC, register here.

 

If you have trouble accessing the registration link and you are using Chrome, try the following:

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  3. If issues still persist, please try using a different browser, such as Safari.

 

Authors

Sally Newell Cohen

Sally Newell Cohen

SVP, Global Communications