Can Real-Time Translation Revolutionise Investigations?

Picture this: you’re gathering statements from witnesses of an assault, but a key witness cannot communicate with the officers due to a language barrier. So, as is tradition, an interpreter is hired to translate the conversation between the investigator and key witness, but it turns out your interpreter is away on a different assignment and won’t be available for 3 days. By this point, the key witness has begun to forget key moments and details of the assault, ultimately leading to the breakdown of the case, and the perpetrators getting away with a serious crime.

Maybe you don’t have to imagine this, as this scenario (or something along these lines) plays out every day across the globe.

We now live in a time where borders are no longer restrictive, and a person on the internet with a VPN can place themselves anywhere in the world. This complicates tracking criminals for law enforcement, as crimes aren’t confined to just county, state or country borders. Additionally, as highlighted in the scenario, we live in a time of globalisation, and with that, exchanges are no longer just monolingual. This means we require translators to be readily available but it’s dependent on the interpreter’s availability and costs.

So is there a potential solution to the scenario highlighted above? Real-Time Translation (RTT) is automatic, live conversion of spoken language into another language. This technology has the power to transform and break down language barriers, making it easier for people to communicate quickly and with ease.

In this article we will examine whether real-time translation has the potential to revolutionise investigations, interviews and meetings.

Language Barriers in Modern Investigations

There is a growing complexity of cases with cross-border or multi-language elements. Borderless crime is a growing threat and is difficult for law enforcement to navigate due to jurisdiction and complying with international or regional laws/regulations. Furthermore, multilingual conversations become more challenging when the topic of the interview or meeting is complex.

To make matters worse, traditional translation methods (which includes interpreters or having a transcription of the conversation translated) are costly and time consuming. In another article we wrote comparing real-time translation and human interpreters, we discovered that real-time translation is more efficient, scalable and quicker than interpreters.

There are many risks of traditional translation methods, including miscommunication. Sometimes in the pace of live, multilingual conversations, words or phrases can be missed or miscommunicated. This can be challenging for interpreters, and so the conversation has to slow down to accommodate the processing of one language and its translation into another. With real-time translation, it is near-instant and doesn’t require processing in the way a human interpreter does.

There is also the risk of interview delays due to interpreter availability or time constraints. This is exacerbated when a department is underfunded or understaffed and reliant on a person to translate conversations. This leads to the ‘forgetting curve’, a phenomenon where details of an event fade as more time passes.

What Real-Time Translation Can Offer

Real-time translation has the power to transform any remote interview or meeting which has multilingual participants. From depositions and statements to interviews and team meetings, RTT makes the entire process of translation efficient and effective. Delays in waiting for interpreters is a thing of the past with real-time translation. You can continue the flow of your conversation while conversing in different languages.

In the secure video interview platform, MeaConnexus, speech is translated into text near-instantly, and present themselves in the form of captions. When you speak in your language, the other participants will receive a live caption of your speech translated into their chosen language. There are over 150 languages available for real-time translation, and up to 5 different languages can be translated simultaneously on a single call. This means that a group of people could be speaking: English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese. MeaConnexus will translate the conversation into each person’s language.

Benefits to Investigators

Real-time translation has a host of benefits for users, particularly investigators.

1. Immediate understanding of multilingual witnesses, suspects or interviewees.
2. Faster interview turnarounds. By reducing delays in scheduling an interpreter or having a statement transcribed, there is a reduction in administrative holdup.
3. Scalable for organisations that require real-time translation, particularly multi-jurisdictional teams. Instead of using one human interpreter per interview, adopt and use real-time translation in many simultaneous interviews.
4. By using real-time translation, you will enhance inclusivity for all participants of an interview/meeting. This avoids exclusion of speakers that don’t speak the native language of the host.

While there are a range of benefits for users of RTT, it’s important that it requires human oversight. Real-time translation is not a replacement for human interpreters in all cases, especially when the topic of the conversation is highly technical. RTT can be used as a frontline tool, to free up resources for highly complex interviews and meetings.

Rethinking Language Barriers in the 21^st Century

Real-time translation, as highlighted in this article, has the potential to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and inclusivity in meetings, interviews and investigations. While it may not deliver 100% accuracy, it is a modern tool that investigators and interviewers can utilise to improve their workflows.

The answer posed by the title of this article is for you to decide, but we leave you with a closing thought.

If language is no longer a barrier, how might the scope and scale of your interviews or meetings change?