Your organisation will soon be conducting a multilingual meeting. You do see the benefit of interpreters, but how many do you actually need? Is one interpreter per language enough? Or are there interpreters who can interpret into multiple languages? In this blog post, we will help you decide how many interpreters you need to turn your assignment into a resounding success.
Interpreting as a team sport
First of all, you need to answer the following question: how many interpreter teams do you need? What? Interpreting teams? Don't all interpreters form one team together? In a sense, yes, but since interpreting is a very intensive job, interpreters normally work in pairs to alternate every half hour. We refer to such a pair as an interpreter team. So, how many interpreter teams do you need?
The rule is quite simple. You count the number of languages and subtract one. For a meeting in Dutch, French, English, and German, you will need a total of three interpreter teams. This means you don't need a separate interpreter team for each language - unless you aspire a constellation as seen in many international institutions (European Commission, NATO). But such constellations are outside the scope of this post.
How does it work?
In practice, the interpreting agency chooses one of the working languages of the meeting as the 'pivot language'. This is a language that all interpreters in question actively master, on top of a second language. Before I lose you: the explanation is more abstract than reality. Let's illustrate the magic of a pivot language: Suppose Dutch, French, English and German are spoken at a meeting and Dutch is chosen as the pivot language. You need three booths (four languages minus one):
- an English-Dutch booth: to interpret all languages into English, except when English is spoken in the room: then they interpret into Dutch;
- a French-Dutch booth: to interpret all languages into French, except when French is spoken in the room: then they interpret into Dutch;
- a German-Dutch booth: to interpret all languages into German, except when German is spoken in the room: then they interpret into Dutch.
Did you notice that we mentioned the pivot language for each booth? Right. That's the language that doesn’t require a separate interpreting team. Hence the rule of thumb: you take the number of languages of the meeting, minus one.
This means you don’t need a separate booth for German-French. Because when German is spoken, the last booth in our example interprets into Dutch and the second booth then interprets it back into French. As a result, all possible language combinations are covered.
Alright, so we’ve covered interpreter teams. But how many interpreters do we need?
Right, that’s a question we have yet to answer. It's safe to assume that, in most cases, an interpreter team consists of two interpreters. Just multiply the number of interpreter teams by two to get the number of interpreters. In the above example, it looks like this:
- Number of languages: 4
- Number of interpreter teams: 4 – 1 = 3
- Number of interpreters: 3 x 2 = 6
So, you need six interpreters. Let's sculpt them and put them in the oven!
Exceptions
Whenever languages are involved, exceptions are never far behind. Once again, the rule of thumb is that reality can be a tad more - or less - complex than the picture painted above.
Want to be certain about your needs? Don't hesitate to contact us. We’d be happy to discuss this with you.