Interpreting at the European Institutions: faster, higher, stronger

Abstract

The workplace of simultaneous conference interpreters appears to have changed relatively little since early veterans provided the first simultaneous interpreting service during the inter-war and post-war period. On the face of it, the task, too, appears to have remained the same, as simultaneous interpreters continue to relay spoken discourse from one language into another language in real time. A closer analysis of the task and its inherent constraints, however, reveals a different picture: in fact, modern-day simultaneous interpreting at international organizations can be likened to the Olympics of the profession. In keeping with the Olympic motto, speakers speak ever faster, the likelihood that they will be reading a prepared presentation is ever higher and their accents are ever stronger.In this contribution I set out to explore these three parameters as the three principal challenges for simultaneous interpreters working at international organizations. The analysis will begin with an overview of these factors’ incidence across major international organizations as a backdrop against which to scrutinize them further.The discussion of the first parameter, speed, will begin with a critical discussion of the recommendations made by early practitioners and still upheld by many professional associations, as they appear to be in stark contrast with the professional reality encountered by interpreters working in international organizations.The examination of the second parameter, i.e., the read nature of discourse, highlights the unique features of this modality and outlines the repercussions it inevitably has on the product.The consideration of the third and final parameter, accent, starts with the isolation of accent as measurable and salient phonological feature of language to the exclusion of other features of what has become known in the literature as International English, Global English or English as Lingua Franca (ELF).For all three parameters a theoretical analysis of the phenomenon including their impact on the interpreting process are provided in an in-depth exploration of the cognitive processes involved in simultaneous conference interpreting at international organizations. 
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Seeber, K. G. (2018). Interpreting at the European Institutions: faster, higher, stronger. CLINA Revista Interdisciplinaria De Traducción Interpretación Y Comunicación Intercultural, 3(2), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.14201/clina2017327390

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Author Biography

Kilian G Seeber

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FTI, Faculty for Translation and Interpreting, University of Geneva
Kilian G. Seeber is Associate Professor and Director of the Interpreting Department at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. His research focuses on cognitive load and integration during multilingual and multimodal language processing with a focus on simultaneous interpreting. He has published widely and co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Bilingualism on cognitive processes in simultaneous interpreters. He heads up the International Association of Conference Interpreters’ (AIIC) Research Committee.
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