Simultaneous interpretation (SI) suffers the disadvantage that the interpreter must do the best he or she can within the time permitted by the pace of source speech and the advantages of time-saving and not disturbing the natural flow of the speaker. The most common form is extempore SI, where the interpreter does not know the message until he or she hears it.
In the ideal setting for oral language, the interpreter sits in a sound-proof booth and speaks into a microphone, while clearly seeing and hearing the source-language speaker via earphones. The simultaneous interpretation is rendered to the target-language listeners via their earphones.
The first introduction and employment of extempore simultaneous interpretation using electronic equipment that could facilitate large numbers of listeners was the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-1946, with four official working languages. The technology arose in the 1920s and 1930s when American businessman Edward Filene and British engineer Alan Gordon Finlaydeveloped simultaneous interpretation equipment with IBM. |
