INTERPRETING FOR THE - iamladp

HI
NT
S
HEADS
OF
INTERPRETING
SERVICES
HINTS is a worldwide network of Heads of INTerpreting Services.
Members advise and help each other concerning urgent questions
and keep in touch electronically. They also meet twice a year on an
informal basis to discuss interpreting-related issues and examine
cooperation possibilities in this field.
INTERPRETING
FOR THE
W RLD

INTERPRETING FOR THE WORLD
International meetings and
conferences are attended by people
from different backgrounds and
cultures who often speak different
languages. It is always preferable
to have the right people present
rather than those who just happen
to be good at foreign languages.
Conference interpreters help them
to communicate with each other, not
by translating every word they utter,
but by conveying the ideas which
they express. They maintain complete
confidentiality concerning what they
hear and see.
Interpreters are at the front line
of multilingualism, working to
ensure that language is no barrier
to understanding. The interpreting
services of the European Union,
United Nations and other institutions
are the world’s largest employers of
conference interpreters. Whereas
translators deal with the written word,
interpreters make sense of the spoken
word. They understand what is being
said in one language and render that
same message accurately and almost
instantly in another. By enabling
communication and facilitating
dialogue, interpreters act as a bridge
between cultures and often find
themselves at the very heart of the
decision-making process.
There are two main techniques in
interpreting. The first is consecutive,
where the interpreter uses a special
form of note-taking while the speaker
is speaking and then gives back
the speech in another language as
soon as the speaker has finished.
The second, which accounts for over
90% of all conference interpreting, is
simultaneous interpreting, where the
interpreter will listen to the speaker
and interpret at the same time whilst
keeping pace with the speaker. This
form of interpreting requires meeting
rooms specially equipped with
soundproof booths for the interpreters
and electronic equipment for sound
amplification, transmission and - often
- recording.
The language arrangements
for international meetings vary
considerably from consecutive
interpretation between two languages,
for which only one interpreter
may be required, to simultaneous
interpretation at EU-meetings into and
out of 22 or more languages, which
requires at least 66 interpreters.

How can you become
an interpreter?
Many people believe that to be an interpreter you
need to be fluent in half a dozen languages. This
is a myth: the majority of conference interpreters
interpret only into their mother tongue!
A postgraduate-level programme is considered to
be the most appropriate way to train high-quality
conference interpreters. One benchmark is the
European Masters in Conference Interpreting.
See EMCI: http://www.emcinterpreting.org
Career opportunities with
the interpreting services
Different international organizations have different
hiring practices, with more or fewer staff
positions. Some have staff who only interpret;
others have staff who also translate. All of them
hire freelance interpreters. If you are interested in
working for a particular organization, you should
contact them individually.

Arte
Chaîne de télévision culturelle
européenne, ARTE diffuse le même
programme dans toute l’Europe en
français et en allemand, ses deux
langues officielles.
Créée il y a bientôt 20 ans à l’initiative
de la France et de l’Allemagne, elle
compte aujourd’hui une dizaine de
chaînes partenaires dans toute l’Europe.
Son siège et son antenne sont
à Strasbourg, où travaillent
quotidiennement plus de 400 salariés.
Les programmes diffusés sont
originaires pour un tiers de France, un
tiers d’Allemagne et un tiers d’Europe et
du monde.
Outre ses missions de traduction
de tous types de documents
institutionnels, mais aussi de textes
destinés au site internet arte.tv ou à la
presse, le Service linguistique a pour
charge d’organiser et de mettre en
œuvre l’interprétation des réunions et
conférences ainsi que des émissions de
télévision.
Pour réaliser la seconde version
linguistique des émissions d’information
et des débats télévisés, mais aussi des
vidéos diffusées sur le Web, Arte fait
appel à des interprètes indépendants
formés aux spécificités de ce type de
travail (plus de 2000 contrats par an).
Investie d’une mission transfrontalière,
ARTE s’est dotée d’un service
linguistique (fait rarissime dans
l’audiovisuel !) qui emploie une dizaine
de permanents appelés à des tâches de
traduction et d’interprétation.
More information can be found at:
http://www.arte.tv

The Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is Europe’s
Human Rights’ watchdog and is
based in Strasbourg. Its two official
languages are French and English, but
it also has German, Italian, Russian and
occasionally Spanish, Greek and Turkish
as working languages.
Interpretation at the Council of
Europe is varied as it involves working
for intergovernmental meetings,
monitoring bodies, parliamentary
committees and the European Court of
Human Rights.
The Council of Europe has a limited
number of staff interpreters and is a
big recruiter of bi-active English-French
freelancers (7000 interpreter-days per
year) as well as bi-active interpreters
in all its member States (the language
of the country concerned and English
or French). It also recruits multi-lingual
interpreters for its many Parliamentary
Committee meetings in Paris or
elsewhere.
More information can be found at:
http://www.coe.int

The Court of Justice of
the European Union
The Court in Luxembourg constitutes
the judicial authority of the European
Union and, in cooperation with the
courts and tribunals of the Member
States, it ensures the uniform
application and interpretation of
European Union law. In order to
guarantee equal access to justice at EUlevel,
it is essential to enable the parties
to express themselves in their own
language. Simultaneous interpretation
is provided during the public hearings
before the Court of Justice, the General
Court and the Civil Service Tribunal.
The interpreters must understand not
only the languages but also the detail of
the subject-matter, so careful study of
the case-file is an integral part of their
work.
The Court of Justice of the EU has
70 staff interpreters and employs on
average 350 freelance interpreters each
year for 65 interpreter days per working
week.
The number of languages used
varies from one hearing to another,
depending on the needs of the parties,
the judges and the official languages of
the Member States involved.
More information can be found at:
http://www.curia.europa.eu

EUROCONTROL
EUROCONTROL, the European
Organisation for the Safety of
Air Navigation, is a civil-military
intergovernmental organisation with
38 Member States across the European
continent as well as the European
Community. Its primary objective is
the development of a seamless pan-
European air traffic management (ATM)
system.
The Agency, EUROCONTROL’s executive
body, is organised in several business
units in seven European cities and its
Headquarters is based in Brussels.
Up to 12 languages are used in
EUROCONTROL’s governing bodies
and in some of the main consultative
groups.
These are: English, French, German,
Dutch, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish,
Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish
and Italian. The official languages of the
EUROCONTROL Organisation are all the
languages of its Member States while
the working languages of the Agency
are English and French.
EUROCONTROL has six staff interpreters
and recruits up to 500 freelance
interpreter/days per year. All together
they provide 660 interpreter/days per
year for its bilingual and multilingual
meetings.
More information can be found at:
http://www.eurocontrol.int

The European
Commission
TERPRETATION AND CONFERENCES
The Directorate General for
Interpretation (DG Interpretation) is
part of the European Commission,
the executive organ of the European
Union headquartered in Brussels.
DG Interpretation provides quality
interpretation in meetings organised
by the Commission and the other
Institutions it serves, and is also a
conference organiser for Commission
services.
The Council of the Union, The
Committee of the Regions, The
European Economic and Social
Committee, The European Investment
Bank, and the agencies and offices
in the Member States all get their
interpreters from DG Interpretation.
The European Commission aims to
serve the actual need for interpreters
and provides interpreters worldwide.
Long-standing training schemes with
Universities and Authorities of Member
States and Non-member States (e.g.
Turkey, USA, Russia, China, Vietnam…)
contribute to a steady supply of
interpreters around the globe.
DG Interpretation has 550 staff
interpreters and provides some 150,000
interpreter days per year, of which
about half are freelance days.
More information can be found at:
http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/scic/index.htm

The European
Parliament
DG INTERPRETATION AND CONFERENCES
DG Interpretation and Conferences
supplies interpreters for all the
European Parliament’s meetings, as
well as for other services outside the
EP including the Court of Auditors,
the Committee of the Regions, the
European Ombudsman, the European
Data Protection Officer, the European
Commission in Luxembourg and the
Translation Centre. An increasing
number of the Parliament’s meetings
are broadcast live on the internet. As
well as travelling to Strasbourg every
month for the plenary sessions, the
EP’s interpreters travel all over the
world, accompanying delegations
to overseas conferences, on visits to
other parliaments and on election
observation missions.
Meetings using all 23 official languages
are held on a regular basis and other
languages such as Russian, Arabic and
Chinese are also often needed. DG INTE
has close links to universities training
interpreters.
DG Interpretation and Conferences
has 380 staff interpreters and provides
some 110,000 interpreter days per year,
of which about half are freelance days.
More information can be found at:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/interpretation

The European
Patent Organisation
The European Patent Office (EPO) is the
executive arm of the European Patent
Organisation, an intergovernmental
organisation with currently 36 member
states working to support innovation,
competitiveness and economic growth
in Europe. The EPO’s task is to grant
European patents for inventions on
the basis of a centralised procedure.
With a single patent application, patent
protection can be obtained in up to 38
states.
Today the EPO is the second largest
European organisation, with 6 700
employees from some 30 nations. The
EPO has its headquarters in Munich, a
branch in The Hague (most meetings
are in those two cities), and offices in
Berlin and Vienna.
The official languages of the EPO are
English, French and German. Whilst
there are about 30 staff translators,
the EPO relies exclusively on freelance
interpreters to provide simultaneous
interpretation for oral proceedings
and meetings. The EPO has no staff
interpreters and recruits up to 60 freelance
interpreters per week (up to 100
interpreter days per week). All together,
they provide some 4000 interpreter
days per year.
Apart from interpretation in the three
official languages, there is a limited but
regular demand for Japanese, Chinese
and Korean.
More information can be found at:
http://www.epo.org

The Food and
Agriculture
Organization of the
United Nations
The FAO in Rome leads international
efforts to defeat hunger. We help
developing countries and countries
in transition modernize and improve
agriculture, forestry and fisheries
practices and ensure good nutrition for
all. Since our founding in 1945, we have
focused special attention on developing
rural areas, home to 70 percent of the
world’s poor and hungry people.
The languages of the Organization are
those of the UN, that is Arabic, Chinese,
English, French, Spanish and, since
2008, Russian. We occasionally use
Italian, Portuguese and German. Some
eighty per cent of meetings are held at
Headquarters, the rest in all continents.
FAO has few permanent interpreters
and relies on free-lances for over 85%
of its needs. The local free-lance pool
is relatively small, so many interpreters
are recruited from abroad. The most
acute scarcity of free-lances has been,
since 2008, for English with Russian.
Arabic interpreters are also much in
demand. On average, we provide 3500
interpreters/days at HQ, and 500 in the
Field.
More information can be found at:
http://www.fao.org

Government of Canada
Translation Bureau
The Translation Bureau provides
interpretation to all Government of
Canada departments and agencies,
as well as to Parliament, through two
sectors: Parliamentary Interpretation
and Conference Interpretation.
The Parliamentary Interpretation
Service supports the House of
Commons, Senate, Cabinet, and all
their committees, as well as press
conferences and parliamentary
associations with interpretation services
in both English and French. Interpreters
regularly travel across Canada and
abroad with Senators and Members
of Parliament on parliamentary
committees.
The Conference Interpretation Service
supports international and bilateral
events, departmental conferences,
meetings between federal ministers
and their provincial or territorial
counterparts, and high-level missions
between Canada and other nations.
Their services are available in Canada’s
official languages and foreign
languages, as well as in Canada’s
Aboriginal languages
In total, the Bureau has approximately
70 staff interpreters and contracts
work out to freelance interpreters. Staff
interpreters work almost exclusively in
Canada’s official languages, although
some are also accredited in a third
language.
On average, the Bureau provides
Parliament and Canadian government
departments with over 18,000 days of
interpretation services each year.
More information can be found at:
http://www.btb.gc.ca

The International
Criminal Court
The ICC, at The Hague, governed by the
Rome Statute, is the first permanent,
treaty-based, international criminal
court established to help end impunity
for the perpetrators of the most serious
crimes of concern to the international
community, including genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes. The
ICC is an independent international
organisation, and is not part of the
United Nations system.
The working languages of the ICC
are English and French. The official
languages of the Court include the
working languages as well as Arabic,
Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Staff
interpreters (20) also translate and/or
work on terminology or other projects.
The languages currently used in the
courtroom are Swahili (Democratic
Republic of the Congo, DRC) and
Lingala (also DRC).
The ICC has designed and run
paraprofessional interpretation courses
in the above languages as well as in
Acholi (northern Uganda). One of the
new languages to be used in Court
in 2010 will be Sango (Central African
Republic). The ICC had 2204 interpreter
days in 2009, including 1176 freelance
interpreter days.
More information can be found at:
http://www.icc-cpi.int

The International
Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia
The ICTY, located in The Hague, The
Netherlands, is a United Nations court
of law established in 1993 to prosecute
persons responsible for serious
violations of international humanitarian
law committed in the territory of the
former Yugoslavia since 1991. At the
time of its establishment, the ICTY was
the first war crimes court created by the
UN and the first international war crimes
tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo
tribunals. It is expected to close in 2014
after completing its mandate.
English and French are the official
languages of the Tribunal. The accused
speak Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS),
Albanian or Macedonian. Simultaneous
interpretation in English, French and
the language of the accused is provided
during all court hearings and sessions.
The ICTY has 35 staff interpreters and
recruits up to 15 free-lance interpreters
per week. All together, they provide
some 7,000 interpreter days per year.
More information can be found at:
http://www.icty.org

The International
Labour Organization
The International Labour Organization
(ILO) was founded in 1919 and is the
United Nations Agency devoted to
labour issues. In 1946 it became the
first specialized agency associated
with the newly formed United Nations
Organization.
The ILO is the only “tripartite”
United Nations agency in that it
brings together representatives of
governments, employers and workers to
jointly shape policies and programmes.
The ILO is the global body responsible
for drawing up and overseeing
international labour standards. Working
with its 183 member states, the ILO
seeks to ensure that labour standards
are respected in practice as well as in
principle.
The main meetings at the ILO are the
International Labour Conference in
June and the two annual sessions of
the Governing Body, in March and in
November.
The official languages are English,
French and Spanish, and Arabic,
Chinese, German and Russian are
working languages. Interpretation is
provided in all these languages for the
ILC and the GB sessions. Japanese and
passive Portuguese are used at the ILC
and passive Portuguese has also been
used recently at the GB.
There are numerous sectoral and other
smaller meetings throughout the year
where some or all of these languages
are used. The ILO has no permanent
staff interpreters, and is dependent on
a large pool of freelance interpreters to
service its meetings. ( It is the largest
recruiter of freelance interpreters in
the UN system, using close to 400
interpreters for the ILC).
More information can be found at:
http://www.ilo.org

International
Monetary
Fund
The IMF is an organization of 186
countries with 2,400 staff members
with headquarters in Washington D.C. It
was created to foster global monetary
cooperation, exchange stability,
promote economic growth, high levels
of employment and to provide financial
and technical assistance to its member
countries.
Interpretation for ministerial
conferences is mainly provided into
Arabic, Chinese, English, French,
Russian, Portuguese and Spanish. The
majority of meetings with member
countries in Washington and in the field
are conducted in the national language
and English, hence our interest in
colleagues of all booths with a solid
retour into English.
All interpreters working for the IMF, be
it staff or freelancers, are expected to
combine interpretation and translation
duties.
With 15 staff interpreters, the IMF
heavily relies on freelance interpreters
for assignments in Washington and in
over 100 countries. We currently provide
about 10,000 interpretation days per
year.
More information can be found at:
http://www.imf.org

The NATO
Defense College
The NATO Defense College (NDC)
concentrates on the high-level
political-military issues that confront
both civilian and military leadership at
Alliance and at national level, striving
to promote debate and to develop
consensus-building and other skills
needed to succeed in a multinational
environment. NDC runs courses for
senior officers and civilians, carries out
research into security policy and runs a
number of outreach programmes.
Freelance interpreters are mostly
recruited for the NATO Regional
Cooperation Course, with simultaneous
interpretation in Arabic, English
and French. Italian, the Host-Nation
language, is also regularly used and
Russian occasionally. The NDC recruits
up to 40 freelance interpreters per week
over two ten-week periods, a total of
approximately 800 interpreter days per
year.
As of December 2010, the four NDC staff
linguists will be officially designated
as Interpreter-Translators (LI-3/4),
interpreting both ways into the NATO
official languages, English and French,
while performing written translation
into their respective mother tongues.
More information can be found at:
http://www.ndc.nato.int

The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization
NATO has its diplomatic and
administrative headquarters in
Brussels with some 1300 staff. It is an
international organization founded
in 1948 on the principles of collective
defence and transatlantic security
solidarity. NATO currently numbers 28
Member States and has a number of
partnership structures.
80% of our 10-12 daily meetings
are provided with French-English
interpretation, while for ministerial
and summit meetings as many as
18 languages may be provided by
interpreters recruited either by NATO
or by the respective Foreign or Defence
ministries.
NATO’s official languages are French
and English. Russian, while not having
official status, has for some years
been regularly used. The organization
employs some 55 translators and
40 bi-active staff interpreters. Semiautonomous
NATO entities in Mons,
Belgium (SHAPE), Rome (NDC) and
Luxembourg (NAMSA) employ small
numbers of staff interpreter/translators.
More information can be found at:
http://www.nato.int

The Organisation for
Economic Cooperation
and Development
The OECD provides a setting where
governments of democratic market
economies can compare policy
experiences, seek answers to common
problems, identify good practice and
coordinate domestic and international
policies.
OECD’s work is based on continued
monitoring of events in member
countries as well as outside the OECD
area, and includes regular
projections of short and medium-term
economic developments. The OECD
Secretariat collects and analyses data on
the basis of which
the Organisation makes
recommendations to the Member
governments.
From its headquarters in Paris it recruits
mostly from the Paris FR-EN bi-active
market, with some other languages
required for occasional meetings, most
frequently Arabic, Chinese, German,
Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and
Spanish.
OECD employs 19 staff interpreters on a
full-time or part-time basis, and recruits
roughly 900 free-lance interpreter days,
almost exclusively in Paris, every year.
More information can be found at:
http://www.oecd.org

The Organization
for Security and
Co-operation in Europe
With 56 participating States from
Europe, Central Asia and North America,
the OSCE, with its Secretariat in
Vienna, is the largest regional security
organization in the world.
The Organization deals with
three dimensions of security - the
politico-military, the economic and
environmental, and the human. It
therefore addresses a wide range
of security-related concerns, based
on the concept of comprehensive
and indivisible security. Decisions
are politically binding and taken by
consensus.
The working languages of the OSCE
and the two associated Treaties (on
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
and on the Open Skies) are English,
French, German, Italian, Russian and
Spanish. Interpretation and translation
are provided eight to nine months in a
year, by freelancers only.
The OSCE Language Services Section
is responsible for recruitment (more
than 3,000 interpreter contract days per
year) and the management of service
requests.
More information can be found at:
http://www.osce.org

Special Tribunal
for Lebanon
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon
is remitted with prosecuting those
responsible for the Beirut bombing of
14 February 2005 which resulted in the
death of former Prime Minister Rafiq
Hariri and in the death or injury of other
persons. The Tribunal’s jurisdiction may
be extended to events other than that
bombing if the judges find that other
attacks are connected to the attack of
14 February.
Interpretation services are provided by
the Language Services Section which
is part of the Registry. The Section
is based at the seat of the Tribunal
in The Hague and has a branch in
the Tribunal’s field office in Beirut.
The Section employs both staff and
freelance interpreters.
The official languages of the Tribunal
are Arabic, French and English. The
working languages of each case will
be decided by the judges. Court
proceedings will also be interpreted
into the language understood by
the accused, should he or she not
understand the working language(s).
The Section provides interpretation
services to all organs of the Tribunal
in the official and other languages
as required. The number of staff and
freelance interpreters employed by
STL is set to rise substantially from the
team of three staff interpreters and 25
freelance interpreters who covered its
needs in its first year of operations.
More information can be found at:
http://www.stl-tsl.org

United Nations
The Interpretation Services of the
United Nations provide simultaneous
interpretation for the six official
languages: Arabic, Chinese, English,
French, Russian and Spanish. UN
interpreters cover various topics
reflecting the nature of work at each
of the four main conference centres.
In New York, the political hub of the
United Nations, they service meetings
of the General Assembly, the Security
Council, the Economic and Social
Council and all their subsidiary bodies.
In Geneva, interpreters deal more
with human rights, disarmament and
various technical subjects. In Nairobi,
interpreters facilitate multilateral
communication for the United Nations
Environmental Programme, the UN
Habitat and other bodies. In Vienna,
where United Nations bodies dealing
with drugs, crime, and outer space are
based, interpreters cover the meetings
of intergovernmental bodies dealing
with these subjects, as well as meetings
of the International Atomic Energy
Agency.
More information can be found at:
For more information about each of the
four locations please visit www.un.org
Staff interpreters must have passed
the UN Competitive Examination for
Interpreters. The frequency of the
examinations depends upon the
needs of the Organization. Freelance
interpreters must have passed an ad
hoc test.
In 2009, the interpreting workload at
each of the duty stations was as follows:
New York
32, 741 interpreter assignments
5, 298 freelance workdays
Geneva
26, 720 interpreter assignments
2, 120 freelance workdays
Vienna
3, 721 interpreter assignments
2,290 freelance working days
Nairobi
2,414 interpreter assignments
1,053 freelance working days
http://www.un.org

US Department
of State
The Mission of the Office of Language
Services of the Department of State
is to facilitate communication with
non-English speaking governments
and people by providing high-level
interpreting and translating support to
the Executive Office of the President,
the Department of State, and other
agencies of the United States Federal
Government.
Our contract interpreters are tested
for consecutive, simultaneous and/or
conference work at three different levels
of skill in over 40 languages.
Staff interpreters must hold US
citizenship. Contract interpreters may
be foreign nationals, but they must be
able to work legally in the United States.
The Office of Language Services carries
on a tradition of language support
for the conduct of foreign policy
that dates back to 1789, when it was
founded by Thomas Jefferson, the first
Secretary of State of the United States
of America. We have approximately 20
staff diplomatic/conference interpreters
representing a dozen languages.
More information can be found at:
http://languageservices.state.gov

The World Bank Group
The World Bank Group, among
the world’s largest development
institutions, is a major source of financial
and technical assistance to developing
countries around the world. Its member
institutions-the International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development
(IBRD), the International Development
Association (IDA), the International
Finance Corporation (IFC), the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee
Agency (MIGA), and the International
Centre for Settlement of Investment
Disputes (ICSID)-work together and
complement each other’s activities to
achieve their shared goals of reducing
poverty and improving lives.
The working language of the World
Bank Group is English. Other languages,
mainly French, Spanish, Russian,
Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic and
American Sign Language are offered
upon request and on an internal charge
back basis. French interpretation
is provided twice per week for the
meetings of the Board of Directors.
Most interpretation services are
outsourced to freelance interpreters.
Given that most of the meetings
held at HQ are held in English, all
interpreters are expected to work in the
bidirectional mode.
Bank staff represent 165 countries. The
work of IBRD and IDA is performed
by about 9,000 staff working in
Washington, DC, and in almost 120
country offices worldwide.
More information can be found at:
http://www.worldbank.org

World Health
Organization
WHO is the directing and coordinating
authority for global health matters
within the United Nations system.
Some 8000 health and other support
staff work for WHO on fixed-term
appointments, at headquarters
(Geneva), in the 6 regional offices and in
145 country offices.
WHO has 6 official languages: Arabic,
Chinese, English, French, Russian and
Spanish. Other languages, mainly
German and Portuguese are used in
regional meetings.
Besides WHO Governing bodies
(the World Health Assembly and the
Executive Board) interpretation is also
required by many Technical Units and
for regular Consultations with member
States on wide ranging topics.
WHO recruits up to 230 free-lance
interpreters per year. All together, they
provide some 3000 interpreter days per
year.
Nevertheless, 40% of the meetings that
require interpretation use English and
one other language only. Hence our
interest in colleagues with a solid retour
into English. With no staff interpreters,
the organization relies fully on freelance
interpreters.
More information can be found at:
http://www.who.int

World Trade
Organization
The World Trade Organization (WTO)
is the only global international
organization dealing with the rules of
trade between nations. At its heart are
the WTO agreements, negotiated and
signed by the bulk of the world’s trading
nations and ratified in their parliaments.
The goal is to help producers of goods
and services, exporters, and importers
conduct their business. The WTO has its
headquarters in Geneva, where most of
its meetings are held.
Approximately 500 meetings with
interpretation are organized annually,
requiring recruitment of up to 3000
free-lance interpreters.
WTO should be considered a ‘technical’
organization, and interpreters
working at the WTO need to have
a good understanding of the issues
under discussion and be prepared to
assimilate the large number of technical
terms commonly used.
The WTO works with 3 official
languages: English, French and Spanish.
With only 6 staff interpreters, the
organization relies on recruitment
of free-lance interpreters to provide
simultaneous interpretation for its
meetings.
More information can be found at:
http://www.wto.org

Notes...

HI
NT
S
Produced by:
DG Interpretation,
European Commission
March, 2010