An international pharmaceutical group celebrates a revolutionary breakthrough in the development of a completely novel drug organising a big press event and inviting journalists from all over the world. To highlight the group’s German origins it is decided to hold the presentations in German and have them translated into English for the international press. Only a couple of minutes into the conference the English speaking journalists start getting anxious and during the Q & A session the reason soon becomes clear. An American journalist complains that he has not understood any of the essential points because of the poor quality of the interpretation.

What had happened? The interpreter in the booth was not an interpreter at all, but made his living producing written translations at which he excelled. One day he had decided to try something new and had sent out applications as a conference interpreter to various translation agencies. And now the time had come. His mother tongue was Slovak and he usually worked from Russian, but occasionally he did written translations from German and had learnt English at school. The 5* hotel where the press conference was held had commissioned an  equipment company to provide the technical equipment for the press conference and also told them to „bring along“ the interpreters. This, however, was not part of their regular activities and so they remembered only at the very last moment. Being short of time they had considered themselves lucky to come across the translator’s application stowed away safely some months earlier in a drawer. Since there were only two more hourse to go before the event started they were relieved to find that he was available and managedto arrive in time for the conference. When he learnt on his arrival that the conference topic was pharmaceuticals whereas he was specialising in automaking the translator managed to hide his fears. The hotel had assured the PR agency responsible for organising the event that interpreting services were part of their standard offer, which is why the PR experts had concentrated on the press kits and cocktails for the reception following the event …