Hello,
We are a rural campus and we are looking for ways to maximize our interpreters who come to campus. The agency we use has a 2-hour minimum requirement, with the amount they charge in mileage and time traveled is often more than their actual interpreting work. I’m looking for ways to maximize their time on campus
That's a great idea Roberto! I was wondering if there is some way an interpreter can be used to help with developing the captioning script for videos to save on the cost of video captioning. Have you ever done anything like that?
Hello,
Maximize in what way? Do you mean finding something for them to do during the rest of the two-hours when the class has finished?
One thing you might do if you know they are going to be on campus at regular times and have some time left on the two-hour min, is make them available for drop-in meetings. For example, if a student wants to go to talk to financial aid or the registrar or office hours or anything else. You can tell students there will be interpreters available from time x to time y for drop-in needs. So if an interpreter comes to campus for a scheduled 50 minute class, you might then have them do an hour of drop-in interpreting either before or after the class.
@kcerenzo We haven't had interpreters do non-interpreting work. We might be able to do that with a staff interpreter, but contract interpreters typically won't/don't do non-interpreting work. Back when I was in my ITP, we were told that we should not engage in non-interpreting work unless we were actual employees of an organization. We also don't have our videos captioned by hand in house. We use a combination of automation and human editing. But the editing is done by a vendor.
