Newsletter
Newsletter December 2012
From Stockholm to Salzburg, from London to Dresden
These are some of the places where SIMCONSULT interpreters have been working. SIMCONSULT is based in Hamburg but our interpreters work in many different cities and towns in Germany and also abroad in other European countries.
Universal demand
In Germany our teams of interpreters have been deployed at events, amongst others, in Bremen, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfurt, Furth, Cologne, Lubeck, Munich, Offenburg, Osnabruck, Tubingen, Verden, Wiesbaden and Wolfsburg which leads us to the conclusion that there is a real demand for high-quality interpreting all over Germany as well as abroad.
A precondition for skilled interpreting: preparation material
When interpreting in simultaneous mode interpreters work unobtrusively in booths which all too often are not very pleasing to the eye. On occasions and for this reason, especially at festive events, the booth or booths are sometimes placed in another room separate from the one where the festivity is being held. The proceedings are then transmitted and the interpreters follow via a monitor.
Especially if there are presentations with projections the interpreters sometimes have difficulty in discerning them on a small screen and have to rely on guesswork. This is definitely not an optimal solution because interpreters are not only reliant on hearing clearly but also on an unimpeded view of the speaker, especially in the case of visual presentations.
It is even more important in these cases that the interpreters are provided with all speeches and presentations ahead of the event in order to prepare properly. Interpreting involves transmitting meaning and culture into another language and only something that has been properly understood can be properly conveyed.
By ensuring good (technical) working conditions and the availability of material for preparation in good time in advance of the conference organisers can make an important contribution to highest quality interpreting and thus the success of multi-language communication at their event.
The right interpreter for the right job
Most interpreters will not be able to specialize in only one field for the very reason that they would suffer from too few assignments. This is why most interpreters have a number of specializations but they still must familiarise themselves with new subjects. As a result SIMCONSULT not only chooses interpreters on the basis of their respective language combinations but also according to their fields of expertise, such as banking or medicine.
A panoply but no set trend
The events with interpreters teams recruited by SIMCONSULT covered a wide range of topics and subjects from so-called kick-off-meetings, medical conferences, business meetings, annual general meetings, training events and arbitrations to award ceremonies, press conferences and events to mark company anniversaries.
We could not discern any major trend but architecture was quite frequent in 2012. The largest event of this nature was a congress on architecture with 600 participants in November in Essen at the Zollverein colliery that is a Unesco World Cultural Heritage site. The conference discussed the architectural aspects of sport and leisure venues.
A highlight for our French interpreters was their assignment on the occasion of an interview with Helmut Schmidt and Valerie Giscard d’Estaing which was broadcast on TV.
And the languages?
The past trend of English as a conference language with interpreting into the other languages continued in 2012. Thus we provided interpreters working from English into Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Russian. When SIMCONSULT is approached for this kind of event relatively short-term and we find that some of the interpreters based in Germany who are able to work from English into their respective mother tongues, are not available, our network enables us to find interpreters with the right language combination in neighbouring EU countries.
Another trend in the past few years is the increasing demand for Asiatic languages, especially Chinese. We recruit interpreters with Chinese less for international conferences than for business negotiations in the business sector or discussions at trade fairs but also for press conferences and annual general meetings. Seen against the backdrop of economic growth in China and other countries in Asia as well as increasing Chinese direct investment in Germany this trend is hardly surprising.
We would like to thank all our existing and new clients with whom we worked in 2012 and would like to wish them a successful 2013 accompanied by a handful of energy and cheer.
Your SIMCONSULT-Team