What is interpreting?
Case Studies
Are you planning a conference, but unsure how to organise the employment of interpreters for all the different languages? In order to give you some idea of how to go about this, we have constructed some case studies for employing interpreters at international conferences.
Case study 1
Medical conference with 350 participants
Languages spoken: English (approx. 30%) and German (approx. 70%)
The listeners understand: English, German and French
Interpreters’ working hours: 1 day from 9am to 12:30pm (with a coffee break) and from 2pm to 5pm
(with coffee break) – total working time approx. 6 hours
Form of presentations: short presentations
Organisation of the booths:
- 1 booth for German-English/English-German (2 interpreters)
- 1 booth for German-French/English-French (2 interpreters)
Interpreter requirements:
German/English booth: both interpreters to work from German into English as well as from English into German (English A-language and German B language or vice versa)
French booth: both interpreters to work from both English and German into French (English and German = B or C languages, French A language)
Conference equipment necessary:
2 fully equipped interpreting booths
350 receivers with earphones
1 lapel microphone for the speaker
4 wireless microphones to be used for questions from the audience
PA system and audio mixer
Other things to think about:
• Documentation (presentation outlines, PowerPoint slides, background information etc.) for the interpreters should be available approx. 2 weeks before the event.
• In order to ensure that all the receivers and earphones are returned, it is advisable to obtain a receipt for each headset that is handed out. Personnel should be made available to deal with this.
• Questions from the audience must be spoken into a microphone, so that the sound can be transmitted to the interpreting booth. Personnel should therefore also be available to hand around the wireless microphones.
• In order to possibly reduce the number of headsets required, it should be established whether or not all the listeners actually need a translation.