During the Easter holidays, I was fortunate enough to observe the interpreters at the European Commission in Brussels. As a finalist in French and Spanish, I am currently exploring where this BA could take me next year and further into the future, so this was a particularly useful opportunity for me to gain an idea of what a career in conference interpreting may look like. Not only did I learn practical elements such as using the console, but I spent the day asking questions about working as a team, and what the future may look like in interpreting, which I will explore below.

The day I arrived was unusual because a large meeting was taking place, meaning every booth was full. The team were able to find me a seat in the Italian booth, although my Italian was rusty, so the biggest challenge of the day was locating my forgotten skills! However, the Italian team were incredibly warm and welcoming, and showed me how to use the console. The console allows you to select the language you want to listen to the meeting in (the original or any of the interpretations). As the introduction and agenda of the meeting were both spoken in English, I listened to the original using the headphones connected to the console and then paid attention to how the Italian interpreters worked right next to me. I later tuned into other interpreters’ work by switching to the French or Spanish channels. This was particularly interesting as I noticed that they would often choose to translate using different techniques to the Italian to me. I had not realised that there would be as much room for style or creativity in interpreting as in written translation, but this proved that there is never one ‘correct’ way to convey a message; every interpreter has their own particular style and technique.

I learnt that native speakers of a language usually occupy the booth of that language, but many conference interpreters can translate from too. Native languages are referred to as ‘A language’ said to be an active working language) and a ‘C language’ is what you are able to interpret from (said to be a passive language). In organisations such as the European Commission, many interpreters are also proficient in additional active ‘B languages’ that they can interpret both in and out of. Most need to have English and French or German, but everybody I spoke to had at least four or five working languages!

A big part of conference interpreting is work as a team, but this didn’t make sense to me until I was able to witness it in person: I had previously wondered if the interpreters were all going to speak at the same time, for example, or even fix each other’s mistakes. However, I found out that each interpreter receives a copy of the meeting agenda in their target language before it starts, and is also able to see which delegate will be speaking next as the meeting progresses. In this way, they are able to roughly plan who will interpret when. For example, if every interpreter in one booth speaks French and German as well as English, and they know French and German will be spoken for a long time, they will choose one person to begin by interpreting for half an hour, before another person will take over. However, during this time, if German is the main language and suddenly a delegate asks a question in Polish, but the first interpreter t speak Polish, another person from their team will jump in and take over. The transition is seamless, meaning the delegates have a constant and real-time translation of the meeting as it takes place.

However, it is not always as simple as switching between interpreters in one booth, because they don’t all speak every language. For example, a delegate may ask a question in Hungarian. This will need to be interpreted into English (and every other language spoken on the day), but perhaps there are no Hungarian → English interpreters on the day. In this case, they will use a ‘relay’, where the English interpreter is able to tune in on the console and interpret from another interpretation (e.g. Hungarian → French). All of the interpreters begin the meeting with a list of possible relay combinations so they easily know who to tune into, and in some cases, they will even do a double relay, where they will relay a relay! It seems complicated, but it works very smoothly in practice, and shows why it is important that they work in a team.

This one meeting lasted all day, and as most of it was in English, the English/Irish interpreters hardly spoke, while the Italian interpreters had to speak the entire time. It blew my mind how anybody could simultaneously interpret so many different languages for such long stretches of time. When I have mentioned to others that I might like to go into interpreting myself, they often reply that it is an incredibly stressful career, so I was curious to discover if the interpreters agreed with this perception. Speaking with one of the Italian colleagues who had essentially translated the entire day’s meeting, she told me that this was the case for her during her training and in her first year of work, grew used to it with time and practice, and now after twenty years that is why she is able to spend an entire day interpreting from multiple languages and hardly stop for breath!

I also took this opportunity to ask her and her colleagues whether they considered AI to be a threat to this field, as it is a theme that has provoked much discourse in recent years. With the development of machine translation such as Google Translate, and even translator earbuds, many people fear there will be no place for translators and interpreters in years to come. Indeed, many of the interpreters at the European Commission were in agreement, and believe they will be the final generation of interpreters. However, others believe interpreting will remain a protected field because of the ethical problems posed by AI, such as technical limitations, bias and discrimination, and confidentiality. These aspects are not just true for conference interpreting in institutions like the EU or UN, but also for fields such as healthcare interpreting, where patient confidentiality is of paramount importance. Furthermore, although machine translation software is rapidly developing, there are still large gaps that only a human translator can currently account for.

The translating and interpreting industries have already seen great change in recent years, and by all accounts it seems they will continue to change in years to come. However, for now, the human translator remains superior to its machine counterpart for many reasons, and language-learning will always have a vital role in our society.

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