Aleks Sandor Milovanovic and Dora Murgu, Interprefy

The backstage of a hybrid event – a complex string puppet called RSIBOX

15 October 2021

Abstract:

Hybrid events have been at the core of Interprefy since its creation in 2014 when remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI) was only accepted as a sideline to in-person events, where complex language pairs or space restrictions could require expanding the pool of in-person interpreting teams to one that also included remote participation. The real breakthrough came in 2018 when Interprefy won their first UN tender and the International Seabed Authority signed on with Interprefy as the first UN agency to replace onsite interpreters for their major meetings with remote interpreters for a whooping cost savings of almost a million dollars. From there it went strength to strength and culminated at WHA73 which was watched by a total of 800 million people worldwide, being the first world health assembly that was fully online in the history of World Health Organizatio).

At Interprefy we have developed our own plug and play equipment (RSIBOX) which can be used onsite for seamless bridge between AV and Remote setups. The RSIBOX originated from experimentation in hybrid environments and is a piece of hardware that has been used on most football championships, Euro 2020 being the most prominent example.

During this webinar Aleks and Dora will speak about what goes on backstage for a seamless hybrid event and discuss the technology behind our RSIBOX. This webinar is oriented at EM TTI students who have a particular interest in interpreting technology, AV systems and hardware.

Bios:

Dora Murgu. Romanian born and Spanish bred, Dora started her career as a conference interpreter. She soon transitioned into the backstage of interpretation services after creating a pioneering training program for OPI which she later taught at universities across Spain for over six years. She has presented several papers at major industry conferences and published articles on interpreting quality management, interpreter training and OPI service provision in Spain. She has worked for major LSPs and RSI providers for the past 13 years and currently holds the position of Interpreter Engagement Manager at Interprefy, one of the leading RSI platforms on the market. When she’s not immersed in the world of interpreters she threads the waters of the Arabian Gulf with her SUP board in Dubai, where she lives with her family.

Aleks Sandor Milovanovic. Raised in South Africa, Hungarian citizen Aleks Sandor moved to Switzerland in 2014. As one of the most senior members of Interprefy (the 3rd to be precise) he built the original Operations Team for which he was responsible during the first startup phase of the company. Shortly before COVID hit he created the Special Operations Department to more efficiently respond to a high demand of very sensitive clients such as the UN, IMF and UEFA. The innovation that stemmed from his leadership included the Interprefy Gateway solution which was first used at the Google PES 2018 and notably at the UN Hybrid Rooms setup which enabled UN to resume their operations after nearly three months of meetings without interpretation. In his spare time, Aleks enjoys kayaking and cycling around lake Zurich.