1. Overview

The United Nations, comprising 193 countries, has a diverse range of languages. In global diplomacy, communication must be handled with the utmost security, professionalism, and accuracy to ensure each member is heard and understood, especially when dealing with some of the most powerful members of the UN.

But who ensures this? The interpreters. The UN guarantees clear communication by rigorously training its interpreters and guiding them through well-established processes. What are these processes?

United Nations Languages

On an operational level, the UN uses two working languages, British English and French, chosen due to the global reach of their empires.

Additionally. the UN has six official languages: Arabic, British English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Spanish. These languages enable the United Nations to communicate with approximately four billion of the world’s speakers.

Equipment Used by the Interpreters

To facilitate the large-scale communication required for conferences and events, the UN typically employs six booths. Each booth is assigned to one of the official languages.

These booths are equipped with industry-standard features, including microphones, lighting, air circulation, soundproofing, and even comfortable chairs.

Delegates can listen to their spoken language through a radio channel system with six options, reflecting the official languages. However, there is also a mysterious seventh channel. The radio can be listened to via an earpiece.

The Interpreters

Each booth must always contain at least two native language interpreters. Every interpreter at the UN is a native speaker of their booth’s language. For example, someone staffing the French booth either grew up speaking French, attended school in France, or both. They interpret the language they know best since it requires more language mastery to communicate one’s thoughts than to understand someone else’s. If a member is speaking French, the French booth staff may take a rest while the other five booths interpret.

The UN staffs the booths so that each one can cover at least three of the six official languages. For example, the Russian booth might contain two lifelong Russian speakers, both of whom can understand English, one of whom can understand French, and the other can understand Chinese.

What happens if someone on the floor is speaking a language a booth doesn’t cover?

What if someone is speaking in Arabic, and nobody in the Spanish booth understands it, or vice versa? In this case, the UN employs what’s called a “relay system.” Perhaps there aren’t any Arabic-Spanish interpreters, but there is a Spanish interpreter who knows English. So, an Arabic interpreter would spring into action and interpret the speech from Arabic to English for the person in the Spanish booth, who would then interpret that from English to Spanish. Therefore, when you turn your earpiece to “Spanish,” you’d hear an interpretation of an interpretation of a speech, all in near real-time.

This scenario happens frequently. English-Spanish interpreters are common, but what about Russian-Spanish? Arabic-Spanish? Chinese-French? The UN relies on the relay system so often when interpreting from Arabic and Chinese that all interpreters working in those booths must be able to interpret both into their main language and out of it for relay purposes. This means there are often three people in those booths instead of two, and they rarely get to relax.

To avoid confusion, the UN only allows one middleman language in the relay system. So, while you might hear words that went from Arabic to English to Spanish, you wouldn’t hear a live interpretation that had gone from Arabic to English to Russian to Chinese, then back to Arabic.

2. Issues and Considerations

Interpreting Outside the Six Official Languages

Of course, not all 193 member states speak or understand the six official languages. What if someone gives a speech in Japanese? Portuguese? Hindi? In such cases, an interpreter must be provided who can translate live from that language into one of the six official languages. The UN’s staff will then translate it from there into the remaining five languages.

Interpreter Employment

The UN employs an estimated 120 full-time interpreters, and these positions are difficult to obtain. Roughly every three years, the UN administers exams, and you need significant qualifications just to take one. If you succeed in your interview and exams, the UN will decide whether to keep you after two years. You might also join the ranks of freelance interpreters the UN employs, who earn a lucrative $666 a day.

The Demand for Simultaneous Interpreting

Due to the mental demands of interpreting in a meeting, staffed interpreters only cover seven or eight meetings, each three hours long, per week. During those meetings, they swap out with another interpreter every 20-30 minutes to rest their brains and avoid accidentally threatening a country with “spectacular roars” instead of “nuclear wars.”

Simultaneous interpreting is so mentally taxing that neurologists are still trying to understand exactly how interpreters do it. One study found that interpretation doesn’t just engage the brain areas that process language and speech; it also draws on regions responsible for movement to coordinate all the listening, processing, interpreting, and speaking. And if that sounds exhausting, it is.

The rest is indeed necessary because while small errors in live interpretations can be corrected before they enter the record, major errors must be avoided. There are few places where “knowing exactly what someone else said” matters more.

Interpreter Training

Interpreters are trained to understand every regional accent of the language they’re interpreting from, and they know how to maintain the perfect delay between when the speaker is talking and when they start interpreting. They must delay enough to grasp the speaker’s full ideas before repeating them, but if they delay too much, they might overload their short-term memory while also trying to listen to what the speaker is still saying.

The rest is instinct: interpreters must match the speaker’s tone and anticipate the end of their sentences to keep up the pace. They can’t ask speakers to slow down or repeat themselves; they just have to nail it and keep listening. All of this happens at a rate of about 120 words per minute.

Interpreter Preparation

To support interpreters, they are provided with some advance information about the meeting they’re covering. They’ll know the subject matter and any niche jargon that may come up, plus they receive advance copies of the documents attendees will have and sometimes even a copy of the speeches people plan to deliver.

So what do we Think of the UN’s Interpreting?

The United Nations’ simultaneous interpretation process is a remarkable feat of linguistic and logistical coordination. With six official languages and 193 member states, ensuring clear communication is paramount. Interpreters are highly skilled professionals, capable of translating complex information in real time. Their work is crucial to the success of international diplomacy and the pursuit of a more peaceful and cooperative world.