A long time ago being an interpreter could often prove life-threatening – with members of the profession suspected of distorting meanings for their own benefits or simply not working accurately enough being locked up or hanged, while in China arbitrary interpreting was sanctioned with bamboo torture.

Today, luckily, these are bye-gone days. By employing the services of a professional interpreting services provider clients can be sure that their jobs will only be handled by  seasoned professionals with years of experience in the market and strictly adhering to the profession’s code of ethics and professional standards. Still, conference interpreting certainly remains one of the most demanding and challenging professions there are, requiring natural talent (and not just language gift) as well as comprehensive training and stamina. The task of the interpreter is to convey a statement from its source language into the target language with minimum time loss and high precision giving due consideration to the situation at hand and the cultural backgrounds involved.

In addition to a perfect command of their various working languages and variations thereof interpreters must be able to follow the speakers’ thoughts and responses on the spur of the moment, to analyse what often are less than clearly worded, blurred ideas, and convey them on into the target language, finding the best suited terms and expressions and technical jargon within just seconds. Putting the stress on the key parts of the statement, as intended by the speaker, adjusting to the moods of continuously changing situations, and catering to a broad range of different audiences – all this is part and parcel of daily interpreting. Interpreters also need to be experts on etiquette and style, easy to get on with, flexible in their planning, and have an extensive, continuously updated general education.

Contracting inadequate interpreters can prove truly disastrous. The list of resulting gaffes  makes for a good read on a rainy day, including the one by US President Jimmy Carter’s interpreter on a visit to Poland who astonished his audience by translating the President’s welcome „I came to Poland because I love you people“ with „I came to Poland because I want to make love with you people“.

In their everyday work interpreters are faced with a wealth of different challenges including amongst the most prominent consideration of the cultural differences between individual countries.  In Japanese, for instance, a direct “no” is an absolute no-go. To avoid the use of the word the Japanese language offers a whole range of other options, from paraphrasing to grammar constructions that cannot be translated into other languages. In situations like these interpreters need solid cultural knowledge to find the right tone.

Internationally experienced, high-level politicians often employ the services of interpreters   even if they have a perfect command of the languages used. By pretending to not understand the other language they benefit from being able to speak their own mother tongue and have enough time for reflection while the interpreter renders the (consecutive) translation.