To celebrate interpreters’ success stories, Monterey Language Services has put together a video showcasing the friendliness, professional, expertise, and different roles of our interpreters in shaping the harmonious community of our nation.  You can view the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYxpYyoC7z0

Interpreters can spend years honing their skills to become subject matter experts in their fields, such as healthcare, education, or the legal sphere. Some have even worked in these fields as doctors, nurses, teachers, paralegals, and more before becoming language experts.

Interpreters believe in the fidelity and fairness of their work. Interpreters ensure that information is relayed accurately between the parties involved, making sure that nothing is omitted or erroneously said and everyone is on the same page. This is incredibly important in medical and legal settings.

Interpreters describe their work as rewarding and fulfilling. Many times, the act of interpreting contains an emphasis on helping those limited or non-English speakers or hearing disabled persons who are in need, such as to help with healthcare or education. This gives many interpreters great satisfaction in giving back to the community and keeps them looking forward to their work.

Monterey Language Services has the pleasure working with so many talented, devoted, professional interpreters, providing excellent service for your needs, whether your event is large, small, private, or a personal matter.

Thank you so much to our interpreters for working with us for all these years, and for the years to come.

However, by industry standards, they also have their own distinct professional traits. What do interpreters do that translators don’t? What does a translator need that an interpreter can do without? How different are they really on the job? Here are just a few of the things that set translators and interpreters apart from each other.

1. Work Mode
Professional translators and interpreters sometimes forget that many people outside of the industry often don’t even realize that these are two different professions. To put it as simply as possible, translators write while interpreters speak. A translator takes a text in one language and rewrites it in another language. Interpreters, on the other hand, listen to what someone says in one language and then convey it by speaking in another language.

The fundamental difference in their respective lines of work is this: a translator usually does not speak at a job, but must have excellent writing skills, with all the things this implies: perfect punctuation, spelling, grammar. A successful interpreter needs all the skills required of a good public speaker, delivering messages clearly by speaking.

Translators in general enjoy the luxury of having more time, but that also means they have to be skilled at personal time management and able to focus deeply on one thing for an extended period, whereas interpreters must be quicker on their feet, able to tune out distractions, and have strong multi-tasking skills.

2. Working Environment
Translators and interpreters have different tools in their arsenals, and work in different environments.

A modern translator is computer savvy and skilled with the leading translation software (MemoQ, Trados, Wordfast, Déjà Vu, etc). Translators often have more freedom in terms of where they can do their work, and since translation requires a great deal of focus and time, this means a comfortable space free from distraction, whether it be a home office or a space at the agency or company a translator works for.

Interpreters, by contrast, have much less personalized work areas, since they generally work in spaces that are not their own, although there are interpreters who work over the phone or through video calls from home. Interpreters in many cases also don’t own the equipment they work with: simultaneous interpretation requires microphones, audio transmission equipment, receivers, and headphones, but these are generally provided by the translation company or the client. Interpreters working in the consecutive mode have a more modest toolbox which usually includes just a pen and a notebook. Recently, tablets and digital pens with special features have been making their way into consecutive interpreters’ kits, but are not yet widespread.

3. Dealing With Pressure
Interpreters work under great pressure because what’s being said needs to be interpreted immediately, which doesn’t leave much time to think. For interpreters, time is very precious. If they spend too much time on a certain sentence or word, they run the risk of missing important information that follows.

By comparison, translators are not under immediate pressure but incremental pressure. They spend a long time refining their work and even invite others to edit and proofread it in order to ensure that the final product is as flawless as possible.

Local interpreters carry out their services in person. They travel to the location – a conference, a business meeting, a doctor’s appointment or a court hearing – and interpret onsite, whether consecutive or simultaneous. There are certainly advantages to sticking with this tried and true approach. Since the interpretation is face to face, there are no worries about technological limitation – no extra delays, always the clearest possible picture and sound, no special adjustment and setup needed.

That is not to say there are no possible pitfalls. Naturally, the pool of available local interpreters is limited, and for rare languages may be entirely nonexistent, not to mention that there is a multitude of travel-related concerns and expenses, from car trouble to traffic.

On the other hand, global interpreters work over the phone or, more often today, through video software. Distance between client and interpreter ceases being a concern, and interpreters’ hours become more flexible. Far more languages and much wider pool of interpreters become available. There are no travel expenses.

However, to balance it out, global interpreters are dependent on cutting-edge technology, with all the attached concerns. Fortunately, nowadays, more and more interpreters can meet these requirements, in terms of hardware, software and internet access, and the technology itself has become much more reliable. We are entering into the future.

There is no clear “superior” choice. Whether selecting a global interpreter or calling up a local one is better depends on the event, the languages, set up and people involved, the situation specifics.

We at Monterey Language Services are always striving to determine the best solution for our customers, and to that end, we offer a full line of interpretation services – whatever your needs, we will find the interpreter for you, whether they are five miles away or on the other side of the world.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for a quote.

Our interpreters are professionally qualified. They have studied translation and interpretation at the graduate or undergraduate level, or are professionally certified, or have received training in medical, legal and technical subject areas. They are experienced medical interpreters, legal interpreters and technical interpreters. Furthermore, they pursue continuing on-the-job training and education.

Our interpreters are not only local, able to come to our headquarters or to our client sites to perform services, but also distant, working remotely through a range of technology options such as video remote.

Our interpreters work consecutively, but also at conference, offering simultaneous interpretation.

Monterey Language Services has been providing language support to hospitals for years. A short list includes Spanish, ASL, Vietnamese, Arabic, Mandarin and Cantonese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, French, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Punjabi, Gujarati, and indigenous languages such as Triqui, Mixteco, Zapotec. Even when a rare language is needed, we can vet and bring interpreters to our customers in a matter of hours.

We stand by ready 24-7, either work with a regular schedule of interpreting appointments, or provide last minute on-demand interpretation, for example for a hospital’s emergency needs.

It is our goal at Monterey Language Services to provide a full line of interpretation services. And it is to that end that we maintain our huge pool of professional interpreters to serve you whenever or wherever you need them.

Monterey Language Services strives to provide the highest quality of translation and interpretation services. Please feel free to contact us for more information.