More than words: the solitary world of interpreters

Go to any international conference, and you are bound to be unaware of their presence. Yet, without them, the high-level meetings and shuttle diplomacy that make our world go round would grind to a halt. They are interpreters, the unsung heroes who bridge the cultural and linguistic barriers between people.
The challenge for interpreters lies in much more than just knowing two languages－say, Mandarin and English. Oftentimes, they need to do their job in real time, meaning that as a speaker is talking, interpreters have to listen to, understand, translate, and verbalize what’s being said. The process is so demanding on the brain that live interpreters cannot go on for more than three hours without a break.
An additional hurdle for interpreters is that one misinterpretation may change the whole meaning of what the speaker is saying. Consequently, a congratulatory remark during peace talks at the United Nations can easily turn into a catastrophic mistake!
So why not use computer software instead? While many programs are efficient in mechanically translating words, they are not as good as the human brain in translating subtleties and indirect meanings. For example, one program was given the biblical quotation,“the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,”to translate from English into Russian. What came out was the equivalent of“the vodka is attractive, but the meat is rotten.” A rotten translation indeed!