To explain the difference first, consecutive interpretation is essentially "repeat after me", so you'll have one speaker and the language will be converted from the source to the target. The second person in the room (discounting the interpreter) will then receive that message and the discussion will go back and forth between themas you repeat between the two languages. It's used generally in small groups and scenarios, so if you've got 3 or 4 people within a conversation that's where you could use consecutive interpretation. So patient to Doctor conversation, HR conversation, social services conversation a family conversation. There are court scenarios, something that's slowed down, maybe training purposes where you'd want to slow down for a training course... so to do that you'd use consecutive... "repeat after me".

Simultaneous is instantaneous, so you'll have a couple of seconds delay and the interpreter will listen and talk at the same time. It's a skill that's developed. I get the impression... and I generally think there's a little bit of natural talent there... that it's either something you can do, or you can't. But it's also based on a lot of training that will take advantage of your natural talent. With simultaneous, because it's instantaneous you can then put relay where you have a key language, and for us it's usually English, and you may have French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers in the room and the French interpreter will put it into English, the Italian, German and Spanish interpreters listen to the English being spoken by the interpreter andthen puts it out into their languages. So like this we can work into multiple combinations. I have a meeting going on at the moment into 8 languages in a room for 10 people. So it's a small environment and we have 8 languages relaying off each other to allow that round table discussion to go on. It's a different working environment, for slightly different purposes.

Some interpreters will be able to do both... some simultaneous interpreters cannot work consecutively because you're having to retain and remember that information before you repeat it back and they're used to going at speed. So they are two different things, and you maybe do both, but you can maybe only do one. So there is quite a large difference between them. For us as an agency, at the moment we do more simultaneous work because we're working in conference environments predominantly. So we do lean more towards simultaneous at the moment but we have in the past worked with consecutive interpreters of health & safety, training courses, court work... all sorts of scenarios that come through with consecutive work. So it really depends which field you go into.

To explain the difference first, consecutive interpretation is essentially "repeat after me", so you'll have one speaker and the language will be converted from the source to the target. The second person in the room (discounting the interpreter) will then receive that message and the discussion will go back and forth between themas you repeat between the two languages. It's used generally in small groups and scenarios, so if you've got 3 or 4 people within a conversation that's where you could use consecutive interpretation. So patient to Doctor conversation, HR conversation, social services conversation a family conversation. There are court scenarios, something that's slowed down, maybe training purposes where you'd want to slow down for a training course... so to do that you'd use consecutive... "repeat after me".

Simultaneous is instantaneous, so you'll have a couple of seconds delay and the interpreter will listen and talk at the same time. It's a skill that's developed. I get the impression... and I generally think there's a little bit of natural talent there... that it's either something you can do, or you can't. But it's also based on a lot of training that will take advantage of your natural talent. With simultaneous, because it's instantaneous you can then put relay where you have a key language, and for us it's usually English, and you may have French, German, Italian and Spanish speakers in the room and the French interpreter will put it into English, the Italian, German and Spanish interpreters listen to the English being spoken by the interpreter andthen puts it out into their languages. So like this we can work into multiple combinations. I have a meeting going on at the moment into 8 languages in a room for 10 people. So it's a small environment and we have 8 languages relaying off each other to allow that round table discussion to go on. It's a different working environment, for slightly different purposes.

Some interpreters will be able to do both... some simultaneous interpreters cannot work consecutively because you're having to retain and remember that information before you repeat it back and they're used to going at speed. So they are two different things, and you maybe do both, but you can maybe only do one. So there is quite a large difference between them. For us as an agency, at the moment we do more simultaneous work because we're working in conference environments predominantly. So we do lean more towards simultaneous at the moment but we have in the past worked with consecutive interpreters of health & safety, training courses, court work... all sorts of scenarios that come through with consecutive work. So it really depends which field you go into.