So what is this all about? One of the oldest professions in the world, in its simpler form of consecutive interpreting, yet still so distant, although of vital everyday importance.
Interpreters have been around since verbal communication began. Evidence of interpreters at work appears on stone reliefs from ancient Egypt. The Greeks and Romans needed the services of interpreters the more so because as conquerors they felt it beneath their dignity to learn the languages of those they had vanquished. However, the lot of these early interpreters was often not a happy one. Many were prisoners of war or slaves, people from foreign lands able to communicate in two languages, and often put to death after being party to sensitive political or negotiation talks.
When the voyages of exploration and discovery began in the Middle Ages interpreters were in great demand and began to enjoy more prestige, many making their mark within royal court circles and the mercantile world, not to mention the church. Communication with indigenous peoples, foreign dignitaries, political leaders, traders and many more, demanded interpreting skills. The spread of Christianity throughout Europe was greatly facilitated by interpreters, while the exploration of Asia and missionary zeal, particularly in China, could not have happened without interpreters.
Less interpreting was required when France emerged as the ruling power in Europe and French became the language of European diplomacy. However, missionaries, traders, the military and many others were perhaps wise enough to admit that communication via a professional interpreter might be the safest bet. Then international organisations began to emerge between the two world wars, such as the League of Nations and the International Labour Office, and there was a need for formal interpreting to cover the different languages involved. But it was still consecutive interpreting, and at this level of meeting it made the proceedings interminably long. In this setting, the interpreter takes notes of what the speaker says and once the speaker has finished gives a rendition of the same speech in another language. This does tend to put the damper on proceedings and kills any degree of spontaneity.
The Americans and the Russians were both devising and testing technology to get round the consecutive hurdle, but neither produced inventions that were of much use. Then came the catalyst!
The Nuremberg war crimes tribunal could never have been conducted using consecutive interpreting. So it was in this setting that Simultaneous Interpreting first came to light. The proceedings were conducted in English, French, Russian and German. The conditions were difficult, the subject gruelling and the need for accuracy paramount.
Leon Dostert, interpreter to General Eisenhower, convinced that technology could be used to get a simultaneous rendition of the speaker's words in another language, greatly supported by IBM, devised and tested the equipment that consisted of headphones equipped with selectors for four channels. This allowed those listening in the court to select English, French, German or Russian. For all of this to work without a great deal of noise interference a 'glass box' (interpreting booth) was designed for the interpreters to work in, and it was placed where the interpreters could see what was going on and be seen. Two teams of interpreters alternated between 45 minutes working in the court and 45 minutes in another room where they followed the proceedings by headset, while the third team had a half-day off.
These pioneering interpreters worked in the most stressful conditions for four and a half months and to them the world owes simultaneous interpretation.
By 1947 the United Nations passed Resolution 152 including simultaneous interpretation as one of its permanent services and today provides interpreting between its six official languages - English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic. The European Union, by far the biggest employer of conference interpreters, now provides interpreting between the 20 official languages of its 25 Member States.
The planning table for a meeting where all 20 languages are provided fully requires 100 interpreters and looks like an algebraic puzzler! The language combination of each interpreter of the 5 in each booth (for a full 20-language meeting) should add up to the sum of the languages that may be spoken at the meeting. That's where it gets complicated or challenging, whichever way you choose to look at it. A search engine has yet to be designed to do the team-planning job, but will it be ready before English becomes the lingua franca of the EU?
Simultaneous interpreting will go on as long as the overwhelming majority of the world's citizens command only one language, and wherever the technology is in place to serve it. But even if future generations become bilinguals and multi-linguals, as they may well do, interpreting is called interpreting because it is not called translation. There is more to it than words, there is no time to 'translate', you climb into the persona of the person you are interpreting, whether you like what they are saying or not, and you assume their ideas, their thoughts, their culture, and put all that into your rendition in another language.
Perhaps that is why simultaneous interpretation is not so much taught to a potential interpreter, as developed from whatever mechanism is already in their brain.
Much has been written by experts on the subject. All I would recommend by way of an introduction to the subject of Simultaneous Interpreting is the 80 min. documentary by David Bernet and Christian Beetz - "The Whisperers" (La Voix des Autres/ Die Flüsterer) - GebruederBeetz Film Production (www.gebrueder-beetz.de).
Sheilah S. Cardno
Lisbon, August 2006