How the UN Translates Everything in Real-Time

Video written by Amy Muller

[Artyomi]

I was once with a landlord who is German who needed to communicate to my Russian parents. He had a friend with him to interpret German->Spanish, but I didn’t know Spanish but my wife did, so she interpreted Spanish->English, then I interpreted English->Russian.
I can imagine that thats a daily task in the UN

[thomasww]

I used to interpret for medical appointments and it really is exhausting. Even though your brain gets used to spitting out what other people are saying, it’s so easy to mess up one word and then you’re behind and need to figure out how to convey what was said without getting further behind.

[potats]

needing to know every regional dialect for your language AND a knowledge of a couple foreign languages is insane

[saturnv]

Reminds me the joke:
Mark Twain went to listen to Kaiser speech in German, halfway through the interpreter stopped while Kaiser was still speaking. Mark Twain puzzled, he asked the interpreter why did he stop. Interpreter replied: I am waiting for the verb.

[Inflight]

Did amy had to become a member of the UN to sit there and test the headphones?

[saugusandsausages]

Amy deserves a raise for being such a workhorse for the channel!

[christoffussenegger]

The European Parliament is working in 24 languages. All languages are spoken and interpreted, and all documents are published in all 24 languages.

[jamium]

I was searching Youtube for a video explaining how UN translators work a few days ago out of curiosity and found no good videos. Thanks, Sam

[mucaravci]

Hi. Wonderful video. As an interpreter (simultaneous and consecutive) this video touches pretty much all the basics. Just wanna add a few things:
- Although interpreting seems hard to the laymen, much of it is an acquired skill, meaning anyone could do an ok job with some training/experience. It takes some time to get your bearings but once you get the hang of it, you can snap into that vibe in a couple of minutes.
- As Sam put it, the reason there are at least two interpreters in a booth is mostly due to exhaustion. After about half an hour you start to slip up. Especially if you are interpreting in between languages with different grammatical, syntactical structures so two interpreters switch every 30 minutes or so. I have experienced my share of exhaustion during college years and at some jobs. I remember I forgot who I was, where I was for about 1.5 hours after interpreting for about 6 hours.
- And as Sam stated, most of the job is the prep work. If done right, you can go through the day easily.
- The gap between the original text and the interpretation is called decalage and it is a topic of heated discussion in the translation/interpreting circles. It is heavily dependent on the aforementioned differences.
- Also, you can ask the speaker to slow down (preferably brief your customer in advance) or say "The interpreter missed this part of the speech due to technical/speed issues." It may not fly in the UN but most common interpreting jobs give you that leeway. Most politicians, executives, scholars etc have experience with interpreters so they tend to facilitate your work.
- The same goes for jokes, uncommon proverbs, similes etc. you can just say "The joke cannot be interpreted. Please laugh." or localize it to the best of your abilities.
- There have been a few instances of famous interpreting mistakes/failures and unfortunately, it is one of the professions in which you only get to screw up big once so the best way to avoid those is to prep the hell out of your upcoming gig but I think 90 percent of the jobs are really forgiving.

[evita]

I am a translator for the UN and to be a good translator, one needs to have a good working memory. It begins with an IQ test that is an hour or so long where you must repeat numbers and test for reflexes and some puzzles. However, they look at your working memory and processing speed scores. If you do them well, you can be a translator, which you are give a year of training first. My IQ was average, at 102, but I scored highly on speed and memory, and so was allowed to be employed. It was a nerve wrecking IQ test and my armpits never sweated so much for any test lol

[LaVerdad]

I went to Colombia a few years back and was the only Spanish speaker among 10 people. After 2 day of constantly translating between English and Spanish, i was exhausted.
I can't imagine being a UN translator

[iac]

I work in the control rooms of one of the UN's agency and can guarantee this informations are 100% accurate.
in the agency I work in we only have 4 officials languages (arabic, english, french and spanish) relatively ch 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the taiden system we have equipped but we also have two spare channels ready for russian and chinese.
I actually was surprised to see that at the general assembly they also have a taiden system. I always saw it as the low budget alternative to the bosch conference system.

ps. most of the times the english interpreters do absolutley nothing during some meetings (since most participants speek in english), it's hilarius to see them just chill out and get payid a fortune while the others almost never stop working.

[DudeRandom]

Sometimes the other speaker would crack a joke in their own language but its impossible to translate into, so the interpreter would literally say "He said a joke, please laugh".

[fodonogue]

Hi, I’m an interpreter (not UN, but still)!
Thanks for clarifying the difference between interpreter and translator because those are very different skills and interpreters so, so often work without the level of prep and time that translators have, even at the UN level!

It is TOUGH, but it is also *SO* rewarding!!

[escha_b]

My uncle used to be an interpreter for the UN! Don’t realize how complicated this was until watching this, he definitely left out the nitty gritty details 😂

[castlering]

I've been an Educational British Sign Language Interpreter before I had to stop work due to ill health, and to describe the process of receiving - processing - outputting (be it BSL to English or English to BSL) is hard. I relate it to driving a car; when learning, you're aware of everything that you have to do, and that awareness causes mistakes to happen. However, after a while, you're able to just get into the car and drive without needing to think too much about what you're doing - it's second nature - but when you then start thinking too much about what you're doing, mistakes happen. Tiredness is a definite factor, like with driving, and I know that when tired, the lag (the time between language 1 and the output of language 2 gets shorter, which impacts greatly upon the quality of the output. A 10 second lag is a good aim.
It's quite amazing how our minds do it....but we can.

[safebox]

The reason there's two interpreters in the booth is also because of memory issues. The person taking notes translates so there's a written copy of the dialogue taking place, and so that any ambiguity between what the two people hear can be cleared up.

[ethanmartinez]

Bro that is freaking insane.🤯
Live interpretation seems something unbelievable when I think about how they listen, translate and speak around same time.
I can't even imagine how much their brains have to process for this.
Hats off to all those interpreters.

[CTalon]

Professional live interpreting has got to be some crazy exhausting work. I've tried casually doing it for some friends a few times and it's just so easy to get overwhelmed, especially if you're doing it for something on television or for something else where the person isn't going to stop talking just so you can catch back up if you stumble.

[alphaxalex]

Last time I was this early this series was called ‘That Wikipedia List’