Where Do
Interpreters Work?
The majority of
professional full-time conference interpreters work for
international organizations like the United Nations, the European Union, or the
African Union. See the Career opportunities with DG Interpretation in European
Union's institutions. The world's largest employer of interpreters is currently
the European Commission, which employs hundreds of staff and freelance
interpreters working into the official languages of the European Union. The
European Union's other institutions (the European Parliament and the European
Court of Justice) have smaller interpreting services.
The
United Nations employs interpreters at almost all its sites throughout the
world. Because it has only six official languages, however, it is a smaller
employer than the European Union. Interpreters may also work as freelance
operators in their local, regional and national communities, or may take on
contract work under an interpreting business or service. They would typically
take on work as described above. The U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan
employ hundreds of interpreters to assist with its communications with the
local population.
Simultaneous
Interpreting
In
simultaneous interpretation (SI), the
interpreter renders the message in the target-language as quickly as he or she
can formulate it from the source language, while the source-language speaker
continuously speaks; sitting in a sound-proof booth, the SI interpreter speaks
into a microphone, while clearly seeing and hearing the source-language speaker
via earphones. The simultaneous interpretation is rendered to the
target-language listeners via their earphones. Moreover, SI is the common mode
used by sign language interpreters. NOTE: Laymen often incorrectly describe SI
and the SI interpreter as 'simultaneous translation' and as the 'simultaneous
translator', ignoring the definite distinction between interpretation and
translation.
