Interpreting Division

The AGM of the Interpreting Division, attended by some 80 plus participants, was held at the Novotel London City South on 6^th June 2009 and after the opening welcome by the Chair, new Chair of Council, Tony Bell, outlined his vision and hopes for the future of the Chartered Institute and reported on progress in relation to the NRPSI Review, inviting public service members of the audience to visit the NRPSI website to see the latest report. 

 

Our keynote seminar, entitled “EU urgently seeking Conference Interpreters” was lead by Helen Campbell, Head of Section, Directorate General for Interpretation at the European Commission. Helen, an Honorary Fellow of the Institute, is a welcome return visitor to the Interpreting Division and on this occasion she gave the meeting a detailed insight into the current difficulties her department is experiencing in recruiting, in particular, English mother tongue interpreters to cover the wealth of EU and UN meetings. All meetings must have an English booth and are cancelled if the supply of appropriately qualified interpreters is inadequate. She outlined how her department manages the continual struggle to recruit the best talent and cater for current gaps in provision. 

 

This year she has already visited some twelve plus universities looking to encourage high level training of new conference interpreters – not only for the English booth; it is also difficult to recruit suitably qualified interpreters from the new member states. Whilst the EU no longer undertakes mainstay in-house training, and looks to the universities to offer this, it does offer support to the training institutions and can send in trainers to assist with appropriate courses and/or pass on their training skills. It also currently offers or signposts various language enhancement initiatives, intensive 3 week courses for people who have narrowly failed the entrance test (which has achieved good results), group study visits to Brussels, dummy booth practice and so on.

 

A very important UN initiative, looking to improve the training and hence recruitment of high level conference interpreters, and which Helen’s department became closely involved with in 2001, is IAMLADP (The International Annual Meeting on Language Arrangements, Documentation and Publications).  This is a forum and network of managers of international organisations employing conference and language services providers – mainly translators and interpreters. Its membership includes not only organisations in the UN system, but also European Union institutions, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Economic Community of West African States and many other prominent international bodies. It is very much involved in the setting up of training seminars, encouraging universities to run seminars and offer appropriate courses. Helen’s work has led to the setting up of a university contact group (see www.iamladp.org/ucg), which acts as a liaison point for the further development of relations and co-operation between International Organizations and training providers/universities. Organisations can thus inform universities of their requirements, shortages, etc. and universities can contribute to the professions. It has been generally agreed that more intensive and systematic contacts between the two constituencies would be mutually beneficial and that exchange of information should be increased. This group looks at all languages and is currently looking, in particular, at the languages of Latin America and the Caribbean and at Arabic, where there is a tremendous shortage in provision. Other areas where a gap in provision for languages and combination of languages has been identified are also being considered.

 

Helen also went on to dispel a few myths about recruitment for the EU, e.g. being ‘bilingual’ is adequate qualificaton to work for EU, you need 5 languages at high level to be considered, the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting is an adequate qualification to apply to take the EU test. She confirmed that only interpreters with a recognised post-graduate conference interpreting qualification will be considered, be it as a freelancer or in-house interpreter. 

Helen’s full presentation will be posted to InterpNet and can be viewed here. 

 

The formal part of the AGM took place after lunch, with the existing committee being re-elected. Two further members were also co-opted under the rules at the first committee meeting after the AGM. The Chairman’s annual report will be posted in due course on the ID page of the CIOL website.