The Main Requirements to Professional Simultaneous Interpretation

The main requirements to professional simultaneous interpretation may be summarized as follows:

1. Professional simultaneous interpreter must have two major qualities: ability to anticipate ("predict") further utterances of the speaker (posses anticipation techniques) and ability to "automatically" render standard expressions and set phrases pertaining to a particular subject field of human activity (pat phrases). These two requirements are based upon broad linguistic and cultural competence of an interpreter, including his/her knowledge of specific terms, notions, proper names, abbreviations and acronyms that belong to the subject field of interpretation.

2. Professional (conference) simultaneous interpretation is performed in an isolated booth (a high quality booth should be soundproof and air–conditioned; see AIIC requirements to the simultaneous interpretation booths in Annex 6) with the help of special equipment: headphones, microphones (often there are headsets) and switchboard for interpreters; microphones and headphone receivers for the participants of the conference; switchboard, sound amplifiers and tape recorders for the support team and equipment operators.

The booth is a "sacred" working place of a "please–do–not–disturb!" status. It is here that interpreters keep their notes and various reference materials such as lists of participants, texts of reports and presentations at the conference, texts of laws and regulations, printouts of slides and transparencies, various (mostly subject field) dictionaries, notebook PCs, etc.

By the AIIC standards simultaneous interpreters work in teams of two or three people and share their interpretation time accordingly (usually one interpreter works for 15 minutes and then his/her partner gets "on line").

Modern technology provides for the use of three main types of equipment for simultaneous interpretation, all of which must conform to the technical requirements of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and all of which have their advantages and disadvantages:

a) stationary wire equipment (the most reliable one but linked only to the premises used). This kind of equipment should meet the ISO 2602 standards;

b) movable FM radio equipment (the most portable one but often producing noise and interference and having a range of about 200 m, i.e. allowing participants to walk out of the conference hall and still hear the translation and very convenient for "unwanted eavesdroppers" in case the conference is of a "classified" or "restricted" status);

c) stationary or movable infra–red equipment (the one that has the lowest level of noise but which can be operated only within the range of a direct vision, i.e. only in one room, which makes unwanted eavesdropping impossible).

Movable simultaneous interpretation installations should meet the ISO 4043 standards.

International organizations (such as UN, CoE, OSCE, NATO, etc) while holding their conferences and forums prefer convergent combination of languages when simultaneous interpretation is performed from a foreign language into the mother tongue of an interpreter. However in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union counties a common practice is to use reverse interpretation scheme when there is the "leading language" of interpreting (e.g. English or Russian) and all other interpreters perform "relay" interpreting from this language into their working languages. This is a cheaper scheme but it may cause distortions if interpreters lack enough experience and work as a "broken telephone line".

There are some recipes, which make simultaneous interpreter’s job easier. Actually these recipes are the recommendations of Interpretation services department of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg.

Practical work at international conferences shows that speakers and interpreters at international conferences, as far as their performance is concerned, are conventionally (and rather jocularly, however, there is always some truth behind each joke) classified as follows:

a). "Interpreter friendly speakers", who should:

– have "reasonable" (not very fast but not too slow) speed of speech and who should not read at a very high speed long passages from written documents;

– slow down when pronouncing proper names, abbreviations, and numerals and enunciate clearly;

– address the audience and not speak "to the third party" (e.g. the "big boss") or "just for the sake of expressing themselves";

– make sure that the microphone is switched on before speaking and remember to switch it off afterwards;

– avoid touching a switched on microphone or tapping;

– avoid too specific or nationally colored jokes, anecdotes and idioms;

– avoid any intimidations, offences or accusations of interpreters;

– provide the Interpretation services departments with the printed versions or, at least, key points (scenarios) of their speeches (presentations) within some reasonable time before the event starts for interpreters to look through these background materials (however, this requirement is seldom being met).

Unless these requirements are met, speakers should be regarded as "interpreter unfriendly", as those who make the job of interpreters too complicated and as those, who do not comply with the rules of ethics and proper behavior at international forums and, finally, as those, who do not clearly bring their message to the audience.

b). "Listener friendly interpreters", who, provided that they know well the subject field of interpretation, should:

– interpret not less than 95% of the SL text;

– pronounce proper names, abbreviations and numerals clearly and distinctly;

– do not mumble monotonously (but neither shout, nor whisper into the microphone);

– correct obvious mistakes (or misuse of words) of the speaker (unless the interpreter feels that the "mistake" of the speaker was an intentional one);

– do not show their emotions (e.g. say "Oh, my God! I can't follow the speaker" or "От блин! Забув це слово!", "1 коли він вже замовкне?", etc) and do not make any commentaries regarding the SL messages (e.g. say "What is this rubbish all about?", "Що це дурню він несе?", etc);

– be politically, culturally, religiously, racially and gender unbiased and impartial;

– be properly dressed and comply with the rules of professional ethics, etiquette, integrity and confidentiality;

– take care of their physical and mental health (do not have any alcoholic drinks at work, do not get too nervous, allow themselves and their booth partners some rest and, in general, maintain friendly and efficient "team spirit").

Unless these requirements are met, interpreters should be regarded as "listener unfriendly" and failing to meet the AIIC requirements to professional simultaneous interpretation.