Conference interpreting is experiencing a twin “Gutenberg moment”. On the one hand, it is being disrupted by Distance interpreting (DI), which requires a bottom-up reconsideration of the cognitive load (CL) imposed on conference interpreters, and on the other, AI is widely expected to help conference interpreters cope with CL in both traditional and DI settings. A “theory of everything” attempts to bring these two together in the quest for strategies to safeguard quality in conference interpreting provided by humans.

In Distance interpreting, we have witnessed successive spatial separations of conference interpreters: from speakers and signers; from the audience; from interpreters sitting in other booths; from technical support; and, in certain cases, even from their boothmates. An attempt to explore resulting challenges in a structured manner has given birth to the Separation model in conference interpreting: each degree of separation induces a corresponding reduction in sensory input delivered to the conference interpreter, generating “extraneous” CL.

In extreme cases, conference interpreters are confronted with additional tasks that are not strictly related to interpreting per se (e.g., technical tasks, meeting moderation), resulting in “exogenous” CL.

Extraneous and exogenous CL is added to the “intrinsic” CL resulting from the inherent difficulty of the speech, thus exacerbating the traditional CL management problem. 

On top of tactics applied by the individual interpreter to cope with CL during interpreting, the key CL mitigation strategy on the team level has been the human boothmate, while AI tools are being created to assist conference interpreters in coping with all three categories of CL. An informed discussion is needed on the optimal mix of human and artificial intelligence to safeguard effective communication in multilingual communicative events.

Some of the issues discussed in relation to the above include a new definition of quality; interpreters’ health; accessibility; business continuity; spatial arrangements for conference interpreting; fit-for-purpose; perception of quality by users; new business models; re-educating clients.