·By Linran YU
What changes when the interpreter sits beside you
A booth is for conferences. For a negotiation, a factory floor or a parent meeting, sitting at the table is the job.
There are two ways this work is done. In simultaneous interpreting the interpreter sits in a booth and speaks over the top of the speaker, a few seconds behind, into headsets. It suits a conference hall with two hundred people in it. In consecutive interpreting the speaker says a passage, stops, and the interpreter delivers it. It is slower, and for almost everything that matters in business it is the better instrument.
The reason is that a negotiation is not a broadcast. People pause, reconsider, ask a question sideways, repeat themselves for emphasis, and say the important thing last. Consecutive interpreting has room for all of that. It also has room for notes, which is why you will see an interpreter writing continuously — not shorthand of the words, but structure: who, how many, what conditions, what was promised and what was only implied.
Sitting at the table, rather than behind glass, does something a headset cannot. I can see which side of the table is confused. I can hear that a number was said carefully. When a factory manager points at a machine and says "this one", I know which one. And when somebody speaks to me instead of to the person opposite — which happens constantly — I can move the conversation back where it belongs.
One thing worth saying plainly: an interpreter carries what is meant as well as what is said, but does not soften it. If a party is being firm, they should sound firm in the other language. My side of the job is to keep both sides talking at a natural pace and to let each of them hear exactly who they are dealing with.
Practically, plan for it. A meeting with consecutive interpreting takes about half again as long as one without. Send materials ahead — a price list, a spec sheet, the names of the people attending — and the whole thing runs faster and lands more accurately.