When interpreters raise their voices


    Interpreters are the people you don’t see in meetings or conferences, and yet they are essential for  carrying on effectively any multicultural gathering. They are the voice you hear in the headset when attending an official meeting. These voices a few only know deserve support and recognition at any time, especially in the European Parliament, where they are starting to feel overwhelmed.

photo credit: http://www.europarl.europa.eu

Interpreting at the European Parliament

   There is no other global or regional organization that uses as many official languages as the European Union, and none that invest as much in translation and interpretation. The European Parliament's Directorate-General for Interpretation and Conferences hires some 480 official interpreters and around 3,000 freelance interpreters.
The main task of the European Parliament's interpreters is to translate the Member’s speeches with the highest degree of accuracy in the 23 official languages and in real time. Interpretation is available at all multilingual meetings organised by the official bodies of the institution. While the translators are responsible for providing the different language versions of the documents, the interpreters must ensure that the meetings are conducted as if all participants were speaking the same language. Between 800 and 1000 interpreters work in each plenary session, as simultaneous interpretation is provided from and into all the official languages of the Union. In general, each interpreter works from the original language into their mother tongue, but with the 506 possible language combinations (23 x 22 languages) there is not always someone who can interpret from a given language into another given language. In this case, a system is used consisting of interpreting from one language to another via a third, the pivot language.

At other meetings, such as those of interparliamentary delegations, interpretation is tailored to the needs of each case, which increasingly include languages other than the official languages of the institutions of the European Union. For this reason, interpreting services are looking for professionals who know languages such as Arabic, Russian or the languages of the countries wishing to join the EU.

Conference interpreters under pressure

   Interpreting in general is a difficult task. Professionals are systematically exposed to stress as they need to stay focused at all times through the speech, which makes it very tiring for them at the end of a working day, until they can't handle the pressure anymore and decide to speak up. 

Photo credit: www.rte.ie

    At the beginning of June this year, the European Parliament's interpreters went on strike because of the unfavourable changes made in their working conditions. Trade unions and workers' representatives claim that these changes have developed unilaterally and that at no time have professionals been given any place to negotiate. Unlike strikes in other sectors, this strike in the European Parliament was not for higher pay. The main aim of the protest in recent weeks was to highlight arbitrary and unilateral changes to the working conditions of conference interpreters in the international institution.

These changes could really impact the quality of the service provided, given that the Parliament Secretary-General Klaus Welle wants to increase the time the interpreters must spend in interpreting booths from seven hours to eight hours. He also requested six hours of interpretation work per month during late-night meetings, which is likely to impact their work-life balance and mental health. 

When observing the conference interpreters' working conditions, it is important to clarify that professionals spend a considerable amount of time preparing and studying the subject matter of the meeting outside the hours they spend in the booth. With this in mind, everyone should be able to understand the reason for the strike and how arbitrary the European Parliament's decision to amend the working standards for professionals working in this institution has been.

From now on we can only hope that they will be recognized at their fair value by the Parliament's head office and that they will get the working conditions they are hoping for. Either way, they surely deserve to be heard and to be greatly admired for their impressive work.

 May interpreters never lose their voices. 

Claire Da Cunha Belves


Commentaires

  1. M1 TSM16 novembre 2018 à 15:40

    Hello Claire,
    It's so pleasant to see that you took up your pen to tackle the hidden part of interpreters' huge task !

    You mentioned the time-consuming preparation part of their work, but is there a time-bound norm for institutions to provide interpreters with documents or any information related to a given meeting?
    Is there a clause at all that enshrines this principle in law?

    Lorène M

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    1. Unknown17 novembre 2018 à 02:05

      Hello Lorène, thank you for your feedback!

      To answer your question, the Agreement on working conditions and financial terms for conference interpreters at the European Parliament stipulates that the institutions have to provide interpreters assigned to their meetings with all the available documentation necessary for their work, but no time-bound is ever specified. It probably depends on the lenght of the meeting or if it implies a lot of terminology.
      You're raising a very important issue there, I will look more closely into it and will tell you when I collect concrete answers.

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  2. M1 TSM17 novembre 2018 à 01:25

    Thanks for this very interesting article!

    I had no idea about the use of a "pivot language" in order to bridge the gap between language pairs. It does seem to be a convenient alternative. But what about the quality of the interpretation in the "final" target language? Could we actually end up with erroneous translations because of the transfer of errors and ambiguities through the pivot language?

    From what we saw in class, interpretation does seem like a difficult and challenging task, and thus requires interpreters to have a specific training. I agree with you on the fact that the changes made to their working conditions could really impact the quality of their work, as well as their mental and physical health -in other words, their life-. Interpreters are not machines, and as you rightly said, their work isn't just about interpreting in a booth, for they also have to prepare on the very specific topics they are going to interpret. I understand that they might feel brain fried in the long run...

    ~ Charline B.

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    1. Unknown17 novembre 2018 à 03:24

      Thanks for your comment Charline!

      The truth is I didn't know either about the pivot language before doing my research for this article, interesting isn't it? I'd always been wondering how institutions dealt with the combination of two "exotic" languages, now I know the trick.
      The process of translation in itself includes making potential mistakes or creating ambiguities. Then obviously, using a pivot language that involves two steps rather than one increases the risk of providing an erroneous translation. This is why institutions have to be very careful when they use a pivot, they need to make sure interpreters can provide the most accurate translation from language A to B, so that the interpreting of language B to C stays accurate as well.

      I'm glad you're saying that, interpreters are highly skilled and dedicated to their work and yet we don't hear so much about them. It is important that at least some of us recognize their hard work!

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  3. Sandy19 novembre 2018 à 09:22

    Hey Claire!

    Thank you for this informative article, this was really interesting. Well to begin with, i didn't know that there were so many languages in the EU, let alone the amount of combinations! I'm also really glad to hear that translators are standing up for themselves when it comes to working conditions, I think translators are often not even enough credit for the work they do!

    When you highlighted the idea of a pivot language/third language, do you know how they determine which language to use? Also, with more languages involved, won't translation get more complicated?

    Anyhow, thank you for this essay, I really enjoyed reading this. :)

    Cheers,
    Sandy

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