As French Sign Language interpreting is on the rise to enable communication between the hearing and hearing impaired, another profession is also playing a major role in making communication possible: the conference interpreter. With ever increasingly connected world, human interactions and exchanges have greatly augmented. So why is a conference interpreter so crucial when parties who don’t speak the same language come together? What qualifications should they have in order to ensure a quality experience?
Specialists in vocal communication, conference interpreters listen to the words presented by a speaker in one language and transmit the message in (almost) real-time in another (their native language).
Services rendered
The work provided requires high-level expertise in order to transmit the ideas expressed by the speaker in real-time and in a fluid, natural manner, all the while ensuring that the interpretation remains faithful to the meaning, tone and style.
They provide 3 types of services:
Simultaneous interpreting. Using very specific material (a sound-proof booth, microphone, headphones, etc.) the interpreter vocally relays the speech as it is being presented.
Consecutive interpreting. While the speaker is presenting, the interpreter takes notes. They then reformulate and transmit each new point.
Whisper interpreting. Placing themselves beside the intended listener, the interpreter quietly transmits the information directly in the target language.
An indispensable service for all international events
Professional conference interpreters take part in multilingual events where the stakes are high: scientific symposiums, debates, multilateral meetings, international conferences and summits, diplomatic meetings, board of directions meetings, important strategic meetings, etc.
They vocalize the presentation, faithfully rendering it understandable to each and every foreign participant. These experts fill a crucial role: they serve as intermediaries between the participants, enabling people with different native languages, cultures and countries to understand each other and interact.
They are critical in enabling communication for international organizations and European institutions (UN, UNESCO, European commission, etc.), NGOs, ministries, embassies, etc.
Benefits of conference interpreters: 3 key aspects of their contribution
Removing linguistic barriers during seminars, meetings, or international conferences is possible thanks to the expertise of a conference interpreter.
Here are some of the principal aspects of their contribution:
In defence of multilingualism
Often considered the first line of defence for multilingualism, conference interpreters are there to transmit and transpose the words of a speaker from one language to another almost instantly. They ensure that linguistic differences don’t serve as an obstacle for following and participating in international meetings. These professionals represent an essential thread enabling the accessibility of these multilingual events.
Saving time and optimal communication
These experts have the necessary skillset to ensure simultaneous interpreting. This method enables you to:
Optimize the time consecrated to the event. Since the service is carried out almost instantly, there is no need to plan for additional time for the interpreting. Contrary to a translator (who works on written text), conference interpreters are able to faithfully and immediately deliver the words of a speaker in a different language. It’s a crucial role to ensure beneficial exchanges during international events.
Guarantee fluid and effective communication between the various stakeholders thanks to the professional interpretation service. Speaker can comfortably express themselves in their native language, they are thus able to clearly communicate a convincer message to their audience. And the audience is able to concentrate on the words, which are carefully translated to afford a greater overall comprehension, for better active participation, all the while avoiding any misunderstandings or ambiguity.
Facilitating intercultural communication
Professional interpreters don’t just translate words! They also facilitate intercultural communications. By rendering these interactions possible, they take an active role in negotiations and decision making, especially in a context where differing cultures are involved.
Specific skills to meet professional challenges
What training is required to be a conference interpreter?
In order to acquire the necessary skills, each candidate must follow a specific educational programme, (a Master’s, or in France a Bac+5) and this is open to candidates with a Bachelor’s degree (Bac+3) who have perfectly mastered French and English.
In France, there are a number of schools with AIIC (Association Internationale des Interpètes de Conference) accreditation that offer highly qualitative training:
Master’s of Conference Interpreting from ISIT (Institut Supérieur d’Interprétation et de Traduction) or ESIT (École Supérieure d’Interprètes et de Traducteurs), both of which are located in Paris. These programmes are accredited by the EMCI (European Masters in Conference Interpreting) European network of excellence in training.
Master’s of translation and interpreting in the Conference Interpreting programme from the ITIRI (Institut de Traducteurs, d’Interprètes et de Relations Internationales) in Strasbourg.
Students will take part in courses provided by actual practicing conference interpreters for 2 years. What’s more, they can gain real first-hand experience through internships.
Required professional qualities and skills
In order to meet the inherent challenges of this profession, this oral translation expert must:
Be able to adapt to all situations thanks to an excellent mastery of the various interpretation techniques: simultaneous interpreting, on-sight translations, consecutive interpreting, etc.
Develop a strong ability to memorize information, concentrate, and manage stress in order to carry out complex missions. They must listen, understand, and orally translate in real-time (simultaneous interpreting) or nearly real-time (consecutive interpreting).
Possess linguistic and cultural competencies. That means having perfect mastery over the working languages and have a deep understanding of the cultures (references). This is an absolute imperative to ensure the information communicated remains in-line with the original message from a linguistic, contextual, and cultural perspective.
Ensure a quality oral presentation thanks to their skill as an orator (modulating their tone as dictated by the speaker, etc.).
Enrich their knowledge of general culture to be able to orally translate a range of highly technical subjects: international disputes, fishing laws, etc., even while the interpreting professional should make the effort to do as much research upstream of a project as possible.
Apply all current deontological rules (surrounding confidentiality and more) because these linguistic professionals intervene in strategic events.
The impact of technology on conference interpreting
Recent disruptive technological advances have changed conference interpreting.
Today, professional remote interpreting is possible through a dedicated online platform. With this solution, every participant can connect via a PC or smartphone and see the speaker while listening to their presentation in the language the participant chooses.
While current innovations are not able to replace the human expertise of these linguists specialized in vocal communication, they have facilitated the work they provide by making it more accessible (for example, when an interpreter or the foreign audience is unable to physically attend a meeting).
In the context of a more connected global society, conference interpreters play an indispensable role by removing linguistic and cultural barriers. With their high-level skills, they contribute to making effective, inclusive international communication possible, which is a necessity for institutions, organizations, and businesses.
We are honoured to count an NGO as one of the clients to whom we often offer our translation as well as transcription services.
Each project we manage for this client concerns a convention, a summit or a gathering for which our services are demanded several times a year.
Let us take a closer look at transcription projects for conferences with multinational participants. These two to three-day conventions are recorded throughout. There are interpreters present commissioned by the client. First, the client edits the files, making it easier for us to work on the bilingual audio (French-English) only.
These hours-long audio tapes in both French and English are transcribed entirely, based on a precise charter by identifying each new speech, in French or English, crosschecking the starting and the ending of the timecodes.
These transcripts are very important because they serve as a starting point for the drafting of summaries of each convention carried out by the client personally.
This type of services requires loads of work. The cost can also easily escalate. As so, we had to find a solution to provide a high-quality service, while considering the client’s budget.
Ideally, we would reach out to professional interpreters to ensure the transcription, as they have excellent oral skills in both languages and are able to switch easily between both, but this would be over budget. Another solution would be to make a native speaker for each language, but this would also exceed the overall budget. Resorting to machine transcription is not the best solution either, as it is not yet advanced enough to handle neither the bilingual aspect of these projects, nor the sound quality…
We had to look for better profiles and finally found the right partner. We entrusted these projects to a French professional translator living in London (Great Britain). She has excellent oral skills in both languages and is able to identify the different nuances in the speakers accents, without wasting time replaying the audio tapes.
With this solution, a cost-effective, quality service was ensured.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not enough to “know” Shakespeare’s language to translate professional contents (text, audio, and video) from French to English! To avoid common mistakes, learn how to translate from French to English and vice versa: biggest issues, best practices, which tools to use, etc. We will enlighten you on all you need to know. Let’s go! (Allons-y !)
Translating from French to English: what are the main issues?
Among the over 7000 languages spoken in the world, Shakespeare’s language takes the first place on the podium. It is THE international language.
Commonly used as a business language, English is also a vernacular language understood by a great number of people in various countries. As such, it is the most widely spoken language (when including native speakers as well as those for whom it is a second or third language) in the whole wide world in 2023. In 2021, English was the preferred language for many websites to be translated into due to the significant number of English-speaking users.
Conclusion: translating your professional content in English is a great means of developing your activity on a global scale. It is an essential step to:
Attract more audience and develop your business capacities.
Attract English-speaking clients (who find it easier to understand contents in their native language).
Increase the chance of improving your revenue.
Gain the attention of foreign investors.
Start a partnership with many competitive international suppliers
Comply with local authorities’ demands to expand into countries with English as the official language.
Improve your business reputation on a global scale.
To achieve all this, you must be able to provide accurate translations that conform to original documents and are adapted to an English-speaking audience!
In fact, literal translation (word-for-word) often result with senseless/meaningless translations and make the company look cheap. Why? Because these two languages are so different. Therefore, the translated content needs to be adapted according to their linguistic, cultural and legal specificities.
Specifics of English-to-French translations
English and French are both Indo-European languages. Even though they are form the same linguistic etymology, they separate into two different branches: Anglo-Saxon languages for English and Romance language (of Latin etymology) for French.
There are also many other differences such as:
Grammar. The distinction of genres (masculine and feminine) common in the French language is inexistent for nouns in English, as well as the use of “vous” (formal/polite form) or “tu” (informal form). The passive voice is used much more commonly in English than in French.
False cognates. There are so many! “Actually” is “en fait” in French and not “actuellement”, which means “currently”. “Library” is “bibliothèque” and not “librairie”, which means bookshop. In addition, “college” translates into “université” rather than “college” (middle school), “assume” is “présumer”, unless you are assuming responsibility for something, in which case “assumer” works., etc…
Lexicon and sentence structure. French is a very detailed language: it has a large semantic field, many prepositions, long sentences, etc. English on the contrary is very concise: for example, to introduce a noun complement, one just have to add “s” instead of a preposition.
This last point is very important, especially when translating from English to French and vice versa. There is a great difference between the volume of words between the source language and the target language. An increase of 20% is noted in English-to-French translations and about 25 to 30% between French-to-German translations.
This difference has a direct impact on the layout of a translated advertising document or when displaying the subtitles of a translated video uploaded on social media. This type of content requires specific adjustments.
Case study: translating a legal document
It is important to take the cultural references, linguistic style and many more issues into account when translating a document in French or English.
If you have to translate a French legal document into English, you have to make sure both texts are equivalent (and not identical); by transposing the Roman law into Common Law (the Anglo-American law). This is the only way the translation can be legally correct in the target country.
How to translate in English: four best practices
1. Do not start translating from English to French (and vice versa), without preparing
You took online English lessons and you have become comfortable/fluent in English. That’s a good start!
However, before translating a text into English, you ought to take your time to read the entire text attentively.
This preliminary step will help you understand the main point (context, tone, etc.). Some points tackled at the end of the text can shed light on those mentioned at the beginning. This will help you avoid misunderstandings and mistakes…
2. Use the best tools and resources to translate from French into English
Choose the tools suitable for the type of content (text, video, audio) you are translating.
Here are some of the top five machine translation software solutions when translating a text from French to English and vice versa: DeepL Translate, Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, Systran Translate and Reverso.
Translate a video or audio file in English into French and vice versa using these specific online tools: make an audio transcription and subtitle a video in another language with Capté. VoiceOverMaker allows you to automatically dub videos. Select the file (mp4 or WebM) to transcribe and automatically translate the text into English. Then choose the voice in the target language needed to start dubbing.
Translate a website using Localize, Bablic, etc.
Although these tools are becoming more and more useful, they are not completely reliable – some results still show signs of literal translations, errors; approximations, etc. – neither are they capable of localising (adapting):
Marketing content to make them more attractive to an English-speaking audience.
Keywords to ensure that all pages on a website are optimized on the international SERP.
So, use them for certain specific reasons: to help understand the key points of non-strategic documents, to translate content for internal use only, etc.
Note that other resources can be used as a bilingual dictionary like WordReference or Linguee.
3. Learn some adaptation techniques
Literal translations from English to French is definitely not an option for professional documents provided for partners, investors, clients, etc.
For high quality results, you must:
Adapt idiomatic expressions, units of measurement, etc.
Simplify and reformulate the sentence without translating word-for-word nor changing its intent.
Transpose by replacing one word (a noun) with another (adverb) using a different grammatical structure.
Change your point of view: a complement can turn into a subject to adjust to the specificities of one of the languages (the active form is more common in French).
4. French-English translation: call on a professional native translator
To provide important professional documents for English-speaking audiences, a good level of English and literal translations are not enough!
For best results, entrust the translation of your documents, be it text, audio, video, etc., to a French-English translation agency working with professional native translators.
These experts make use of their linguistic skills (they translate into their mother tongue) and their sound knowledge of the target culture. With their education and many years of practice, they are capable of providing accurate translations as well as adapting appropriately. They can even do transcreations (creative adaptation) to make your marketing or touristic content more appealing.
Conclusion: by assigning an English-French translator to your project, the translated content are more accurate and adapted for your targeted audience.
You now know how to translate a text or a video into English. While some accessible tools will certainly suffice in some cases, nothing can replace the skills of human professional translators. Reaching out to them is the optimum way to get high quality translations that meets your targeted audiences’ expectations and ensure a successful international development.
Learning a new language as a beginner is not an easy task and can be very intimidating. With a bunch of new words, it can be hard to know where to start. Regardless, you are motivated because you want to increase your chance of getting a job or migrate to a new country where better opportunities await. Naturally, you would want to learn English. While learning this new language, you notice that some words, strangely enough, sound familiar.
Thanks to William the Conqueror in particular, French has had a great influence on English. During the reign of the French Kings, both languages were starting to be blend together. By the way, did you know that Richard I, also called Richard the Lionheart, did not know a single word in English, even though he was King of England? At the time, French was the official language of England until the beginning of the 15th century. The power and the influence of the French monarchy at the time turned French into the reference language in the royal court. How far does the historical relationship between French and English go?
In an article (that you can find here) written by Laura K. Lawless, a female translator passionate about language, she made a list of some French words used by English speakers. She also points out that an English person who never learned French already knows some 15,000 French words without even being aware of the fact, and that there are about 1,700 true cognates (more or less similar) between both languages.
This list of words and idioms is quite interesting because it makes one realize how English has been greatly influenced by French. Many idioms originate not only from French gastronomy (you don’t say!) but also from Arts. This is a key opportunity to enrich your vocabulary with new words and traditional French idioms.
Here are some interesting French words:
“Chaise longue” mostly written as “chaiselounge” or “lounge chair”
“Je ne sais quoi” as in “I really like Anne. She has a certain je ne sais quoi that I find appealing”
“Soupçon” (hint) as in “There’s just a soupçon of garlic in the soup”.
“Cuisine” (literally means cooking) is used when referring to haute cuisine/gourmet cuisine.
“Couture” (literally means sewing) is used when referring to haute couture (high quality fashion clothes).
“Adieu” (literally means goodbye) is mostly used in a more formal tone.
“Coup d’état” (often shortened to just coup in English) means the same thing in both languages.
However, be careful with the pronunciations of these words. Even though these words are French, they are to be pronounced with an English accent! If you would like to improve your pronunciation skills either for vacation or business purpose, here are some advices for you.
Impromptu, grotesque, rendez-vous, plat de résistance, etc. Each time you think you have seen it all; you find a new connection between France and England or a new strange way of using a French word in English. We highly recommend you check the whole list.
How would you like to benefit from personalized support for your digital training projects? This is precisely what E-learning agencies do. They take on a number of tasks like engineering educational curriculum, graphic and multimedia design, and even integration into an LMS platform. We are here to guide you into making the right decisions by providing you with a list of the most popular digital learning agencies.
Top 10 best E-learning agencies
Callimedia
This e-learning agency provides customized digital learning solutions for companies, administrations and associations.
Callimedia offers complete services ranging from specialized and personalized turnkey digital training, to mobile learning, as well as a reliable, advanced LMS platform, UPility®, perfect for all companies – ISEs, SMEs, large international groups, etc.
Baber Learning
Baber Learning offers the best e-learning methods such as scripting, adaptive learning, interactive learning activities, case studies and even games.
With these methods, Baber Learning delivers creative content to gain learners’ attention using a specific approach: videos, motion design, illustrations, pictures, sound design…
All of this makes it easier to memorize and effectively develop employees’ skills, whether they are employed in SMEs or multinational companies.
Nell & associés
Nell & Associés is a multifunctional digital learning agency that regroups all the required capacities to guarantee a successful training project.
This agency helps in creating customized training systems with a range of services: designing training curriculum, auditing and diagnosis, comparative studies, etc.
As an expert in audio-visual content, Nell & associés works with illustrators who majored in prestigious art schools. They also have a team of motion designers. This enables them to design high-quality e-learning module videos.
Takoma
Takoma – one of the leaders of digital e-learning in France – creates over 350 educational systems per year.
Takoma excels particularly in training techniques and the restrictions that comes with different devices: computer, smartphone, tablet, etc. They look to offer an optimal user experience, adapted to all needs.
All this is achieved by offering a range of different services: blended learning, serious games, mobile learning, virtual learning, etc.
VideoLearning
With a team of 250 artists and experts, VideoLearning supports companies of all sizes in their e-learning projects.
This creative agency specializes in customized digital learning solutions and offers a wide range of services using cutting-edge technologies.
As its name suggests, VideoLearning specializes its expertise in motion design, drone filming and 360° videos, but it also produces all types of interactive content and fun activities.
E-learning Touch’
E-learning Touch’ helps companies showcase their expertise and design innovative and attractive e-learning modules for learners.
With its experienced project managers, the agency offers quality advice on digital learning, as well as adequate solutions for all sectors of activity: banking and finance, institutions and local authorities, health, food processing, etc.
E-learning Touch’ is more than capable in terms of graphics and interactivity – clear and attractive designs that prioritizes relaying comprehensive information while avoiding cognitive clutter.
Tips n’ Learn
Explorers of innovative learning solutions, the experts at Tips n’ Learn create customized e-learning modules that intelligently blend technology and emotion.
The agency always carries out a complete analysis of its client’s needs as e-learning projects raise important issues, both in terms of organization and finance.
When producing and designing training courses, Tips n’ Learn takes special care with the style of the finished product while also ensuring the content is connected to the realities of the field, so learners find the courses both fun and educational.
Speedernet
The training programmes created by the Speedernet teams respond to all the clients’ needs, regardless of the e-learning project.
Speedernet’s courses – inspired from all forms of visual art and narratives – are interactive, innovative and immersive.
This agency specializes in immersive learning, which helps in increasing the learning rate by 30%. This method is effective in allowing learners to have a clear idea of what they will encounter in the field.
WeUp Learning
With more than 950,000 trainees, 5,000 videos and 500 completed projects, WeUp Learning has nothing left to prove in this field.
This e-learning agency provides educational engineers, audio-visual specialists, developers, as well as facilitators whose role is to analyse the training programmes and encourage the learners on a daily basis.
Being an experienced e-Learning agency makes it easier to complete your digital learning project in less than 3 months.
Learny Bloom
Learny Bloom creates bespoke e-learning courses, with digital and audio-visual content that reveals the learners’ full potential.
From making technological decisions to change management, the agency provides advice and support throughout you project. It also helps your staff get to grips with major e-learning production tools, such as Storyline 360, the Articulate 360 suite, Vyond, etc.
Why translate your e-learning courses?
Are you part of an international group? Would you like to introduce your courses to a new audience? If so, don’t hesitate to reach out to a professional translation agency to make your educational content accessible to as many people as possible.
