Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another Interpreter's Reveal. Today we'll be looking at the last of the big four RSI platforms. Kudo. Now, if you've watched other videos in this series, you know that I am not affiliated with any of the platforms in any way, and I'm certainly not endorsing any of them. The idea behind these videos is just to provide a realistic look at the interpreter's practical experience. That said, you may be wondering, why bother doing a video on Kudo at all? I mean, it's all out there. The company has a very complete onboarding program with lots of how-to videos and tutorials. They even offer a seal that interpreters can post on social media to show that they've completed the process and are, in theory, ready to work on Kudo. Now, the company's choice of wording for that Kudo-ready status, however, as Kudo-certified, is, from my perspective, extraordinarily unfortunate choice of terminology. But that's neither here nor there. The question was, why bother? And why bother? Well, quite simply, because you, our viewers, asked us to. So here we go. The first thing we'll need to do is log on to the platform using our regular Kudo credentials. As you can see, we'll get a notice, for a better experience, please wear a headset. I actually think that that's probably not necessary, considering that we're talking about professional interpreters. It would be great, of course, if participants in meetings would follow that notice. They get it as well. I've gone ahead and configured my outgoing and incoming channels, but if I needed to change that, I certainly could. I go up there to configure, and I will then select, for example, a third outgoing language, say Portuguese. I could also go ahead and change my incoming. I could change that as well, down here to the Portuguese. Of course, we'll really only change the outgoing language if we're working in a bidirectional booth. So I probably don't want that Portuguese option. That's just going to confuse me. I'll go back to just my bilingual booth, English and Spanish, for the purposes of this demonstration. As you can see, my English is live on my outgoing channel. If I needed to change it to the Spanish, I would simply click, and it would turn red. Now, before we dive in on the interpreter's controls, let's get a broad overview of what we're looking at. We have our live video here. We can see what's happening on screen. Now, the video that you're seeing is my TV. Of course, if we were actually on the KUDO platform getting this feed live, the video quality would be much better. If my speaker were sharing slides, we would then click on Presentation and be able to see those. Now, unfortunately, it's not yet possible on KUDO to separate the two. There's no drag and drop. So if you're like me and you're working on two screens, you don't have the opportunity on KUDO to see the live view on one screen and the presentation on another. But what you can do is decide how you want to see your speakers. So if I'm here, I'm in Speaker View, or if there were more than one speaker, I could click and go to Gallery View. I also have an option here to go to the full screen. But as soon as I do that, all of my other controls will disappear. So it's probably not a function that interpreters want to use very often. We want to be able to monitor what's going on on our outgoing channel and certainly to see whether our microphone is live. Of course, if we're going to be working with relay, we'll need to see our incoming channels as well. Of course, in the middle of our screen, we have that on off our microphone so that we can go live here. It does take just a moment for that microphone to turn on. I call that platform-induced decalage. As you can see, I am live and on the English channel. Here we can see that my output is correct. I am broadcasting. I think it's important to keep an eye on this because if you're like me, for example, and are using a headset that has an inline mute button, if you accidentally bump it. So it is important to keep an eye on that to make sure that you are continuing to broadcast. Over here on the left, we have the handover function. We'll talk about that more in just a moment. Over here in this section, we have a mute button, which I can simply press. The microphone will be muted and then I click on it again to release and I am back and live. I have a volume indicator here or a volume adjustment tool to be able to increase or decrease the volume that I am hearing. Once again, our outgoing channels, if I need to change from the English channel to the Spanish channel, I simply click on it. Wait a moment. Again, that platform-induced decalage. And now I am live on the Spanish channel and you can see that my output monitor is reflecting that change. Switching back to English. Again, it takes just a moment for that microphone to kick back in. And once again, I'm now live on the English channel. For my incoming, I've selected English so that I can hear my colleague. Kudo has fairly recently added an option to hear the floor as well, so I can click on one of three volume levels. Low, medium, or high. This will determine the mix between the floor and my interpreting partner. The option also works if I need to take relay. Now, we don't have a colleague on the Spanish channel right now, but I'll explain how it works anyway. So, I change my incoming language to Spanish and I would keep, for example, the floor on medium. This would enable me to work from my colleague's rendition and to keep track of what's going on on the floor at the same time. Again, this is an extremely welcome feature for those of us who work in settings in which speakers switch back and forth between languages with no notice. Now, for example, I can hear when they switch to English and turn my mic off. If it's not muted, turn it off. Another fairly recent innovation is the soft refresh option here at the top of the screen. When I click on that, I will be disconnected momentarily. I get that rather irksome, I have to admit, notification once again. Probably not necessary at this juncture, but the nice thing is that my channels have come back just as I had them. And to conclude our description of the control panel in general, we have a number of options over here on the right. Our messaging or polls, which for the interpreter may not be so useful, except when you get to see the results of a vote. We have a document function, which is great. If the organizers have posted documents that are relevant to the event there, I can simply click on this, open them up and download them. I have a shortcut list in case I prefer to use my keyboard and not my mouse. I also have a great little tool here, which is the request list. This will give the interpreter the list of the speakers who are waiting to speak. This can be great in giving interpreters a clue as to who's coming next, what their name is, what country or delegation they represent, and of course, what language they may be speaking. So if you're going to be taking a lot of relay or switching back and forth, this can be helpful. The only downside is, as you can see, it's a really large box and it covers up our interpreter controls. There's no way to drag and drop it to move it somewhere else. So you check the list and then close it to make sure that you're able to keep track of what is going on. And if you are live, of course, you want to make sure that you are broadcasting and that your outputs are actually operational. Now, about that handover. As you can see, my Boothmate is interpreting. Now, because in this case, it will be the active interpreter who initiates the handover. She'll go ahead and do that. I will get a notification that I can hear and the message ready to switch. When I click yes, my Boothmate is alerted that I am ready and as soon as it is an appropriate time, my Boothmate will hit go. The request is complete. I get two beeps and then I need to turn my microphone on. Again, that platform induced decollage while the microphone turns on. And as you can see, I am live and broadcasting. It's important to remember that your microphone will not turn on automatically when you receive a handover. Now, let's see what happens when it goes the other way. I'll start that handover request. My Boothmate will say yes, she's ready. I will get a notification. I will hit go. My microphone turns off and my colleague has now taken over. Now, let's say that my colleague is interpreting and is completely in the zone. She doesn't realize that it's time for a shift for us to switch places. What I can do is hit nudge. This will send a request very similar to a handover. If my Boothmate accepts it, the same thing will happen. I will get the notification and we will be able to do that switch. I'll turn on my microphone and I will take over. If the same thing happens to me, my Boothmate will nudge me. I will say that I'm ready to switch. I'll then hit go. And my Boothmate will turn on her mic. Now, you may have noticed that when I did that, there was a brief notification that looked like it had several different options. That's another one of those funky little glitches. Sometimes it comes up that way, sometimes it doesn't. Don't worry about it. The function still works. Let's say there's an emergency. My colleague's internet has dropped or someone has advised us that there's a sound issue on my colleague's end. I could nudge her to take over, but I could also override the channel. To do that, I simply turn my microphone on. I get a notification. The channel is busy. Do I want to override it? Yes. I wait for a moment. My microphone goes live. Now again, this is one of those little glitchy, buggy things on Kudo. The mic doesn't always automatically turn on. So pay attention. If it doesn't, you'll need to click on it again to make sure that that microphone goes live. And there you have it. I think that covers the basics here on Kudo. Happy interpreting, and thanks for watching.