Cymo booth – great, easy-to-use private booth channel for interpreters on Zoom

When Peter Sand mentioned Cymo Booth recently as a solution to having a private video/audio/chat channel with your remote boothmate while interpreting on Zoom, my spontaneous reaction was “Oh no, not another video channel on my already over-crowded screen …” But luckily, Angelika Eberhardt talked me into trying it nonetheless. Or rather, she simply sent me a link, and there I was in our private booth, literally within seconds!

So, this is what the virtual booth looks like in the app (left) and in Chrome (right):

And here’s why I became a Cymo Booth fan in no time:

  • You can assign your boothmate’s sound to a different audio output device from Zoom. So I could hear Angelika on external loudspeakers, just as if she was sitting next to me. The audio volume can be adjusted easily, and independent of the Zoom sound volume. As I find it a relief to my ears to take my headphones off while I am not interpreting in the first place, this simple fact was enough to turn me into a Cymo user right away. (I also like the fact that when I leave my office to grab a coffee, my boothmate can shout at me via the loudspeakers and I can hear this even from the kitchen.) Furthermore, like that I can listen to a relay channel on Zoom and to my boothmate simultaneously. Plus: No second device needed any more, unless you want it as a backup, or because you find the relay buttons on Zoom too fiddly.
  •  Cymo Booth is a very low-threshold application. If you are a registered user, you can send your boothmate an invitation link and there you are. No need to install the app as an invitee, you just open the link in Chrome (unfortunately this only works on a Windows or Mac computer and not on a mobile phone) and off you go.
  • No risk of incoming private calls/messages like on WhatsApp, or of accidentally posting kisses or even more compromising messages to the booth chat instead of sending them to your sweetheart.

As to the chat function, we neither used the predefined chat messages nor the hand-over function. I also deactivated the notification sound for incoming messages. But it is good to have the option in case you fear missing important messages (“you’re on mute”) from your boothmate. What we missed in the chat were time stamps. We’ve got really used to referring to them for tracking at which time we last took turns. Emojis would also be nice to have, but then you can still insert them using the Ctrl+. hotkey.

The video is nice enough, and it turns into a blurred background image once you open the chat window, which I find a very elegant solution. I know this sounds a bit anti-social, but I am not too keen on seeing my boothmate all the time. I find it rather distracting, while I really appreciate being able to hear each other and talk freely.

By the way, Cymo Booth is a free-of-charge software made by interpreters for interpreters. All in all, I found it both intuitive and useful, so much so that I felt like donating something to the providers right after my first Cymo experience.

It might also be an interesting option for “normal” meeting participants who want to have a private communication channel with other participants 🙂


Anja Rütten is a freelance conference interpreter for German (A), Spanish (B), English (C), and French (C) based in Düsseldorf, Germany. She has specialised in knowledge management since the mid-1990s.

Comments

6 responses to “Cymo booth – great, easy-to-use private booth channel for interpreters on Zoom”

  1. Carmen avatar
    Carmen

    thank you very, very much for this tip! Am getting Cymo Zoom asap
    keep the good work!
    Carmen Romero

  2. Lisette Pelzer avatar
    Lisette Pelzer

    Super Anja, danke für den tollen Tipp!! VG

  3. batwing01 avatar

    Vielen Dank, liebe Anja. Sehr interessant.

  4. Alvin avatar
    Alvin

    The within-seconds convenience is a huge compromise for your privacy and security breaching. When you add on the security, it is no longer easy and attractive, or let’s say there are much better alternatives in the world than it.

    1. Anja Rütten avatar

      Dear Alvin, thank you very much for bringing up this important aspect. At least concerning Cymo Meetings (which is their RSI platform), it says on their website “Cymo meetings are secured with AES 256-bit encryption, the same technology the U.S. government uses to protect their information.” https://www.cymo.io/en/documentation/meeting/index.html

    2. Jaffee Lu avatar

      Dear Alvin,

      Thank you for raising this concern. This is Jaffee from the Cymo team. Anja sent me an email requesting for more information on how we deal with privacy and security. I would like to offer more information here to help users like yourself to make an informed decision and comparison with other solutions.

      This question is two-fold. 1. how do we protect real-time communication data (voice, video, and messaging). 2. how do we protect user information (username, password, personal information).

      1. As Anja mentioned, Cymo Booth uses the same military-grade AES 256-bit encryption algorithm as Cymo Meeting’s to protect real-time communication data. Booth sessions are designed to be ephemeral and no such data is saved anywhere after each session.

      2. Cymo treats user privacy with utmost respect. Unlike many other platforms that collect user data from third-party SSO services, Cymo requests only a limited number of necessary data to make its login system work. Sensitive information such as passwords are also protected by state-of-the-art encryption algorithms and will not be accessible to any one, not even the engineering team.

      As you may have noticed, there are video conferencing solutions with very little friction such as Google Meet where login is not a must. Yet it does not mean they are compromising on security. We are making our best efforts to stike a balance between ease of use and security. As a niche brand, we will keep an eye out on the best industry practices regarding security and privacy protection and keep building user trust.

      You may also find more information here: https://www.cymo.io/privacy.html

      Thank you for your feedback!

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