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Dual language and remote participation

At Public-i we are proud to work with many Welsh clients, many of whom use our dual language facility to stream simultaneous Welsh and English streams.

Live webcast in English and Welsh

When the Covid-19 lockdown began, our development team worked first on developing Connect Remote: a remote participation platform which facilitates working from home and webcasting. Since then, we have developed two hybrid meeting solutions which accommodate the changing nature of meetings: with some attendees present in the Council chamber and some still working from home.

Dual language for hybrid meetings

We understand the importance of developing a dual language component to both of these setups. This is vital on a legislative level, but also to demonstrate our own and our clients’ dedication to supporting the Welsh-language and its speakers. However, the development of a system which allows simultaneous translation whilst incorporating remote participation and live streaming is extremely complex. We do not want to rush development; we want to ensure that any solution is robust and cost-effective.

That being said, our team have spent some time developing a temporary workaround for those clients who require an immediate simultaneous interpretation solution.

Videconference webcast with live translation via 4 laptops

Zoom offers a simultaneous interpretation, which we can embed within Connect webcasting using several laptops working in sync. We can build similar solutions around other VC platforms too (like Teams, Skype or Connect Remote). These are complex solutions which would require a site survey prior to implementation. We would encourage clients to view them as temporary solutions which could be employed in the short-term to solve the problem of requiring simultaneous interpretation. The tech specs of these solutions can be seen here.

Videconference webcast with live translation via 3 laptops and a phone

Rest assured that development of a simpler, more robust long-term solution is on our “to-do” list; but we first have to focus on features which enable officers to run votes, manage speaker queues and involve public speakers. We appreciate our clients’ patience whilst we lay the groundwork for developing both our hybrid meeting and remote participation platforms into feature-rich systems. In the meantime, please do get in touch if there are any questions regarding anything Public-i can do to help facilitate your meetings in the current climate.

To find out more about these solutions, please contact us on 01273 821 282

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