CHINESE INTERPRETATION SERVICE

We have extensive experience in assisting with Chinese delegation visits, business meetings and training sessions. Our practitioners are also well trained in conference interpreting. We work with direct clients as well as agencies! Interpreters are charged with the challenging tasks not just of translating words, but of interpreting their meaning. Whether you're just starting your career as an interpreter or hoping to improve your skills after a long tenure in your career, constant practice is a vital key for success, particularly in the areas of interpreting you find most challenging.

What is the difference between translation and interpreting?

Interpretation or interpreting is oral translation of speech or sign from a language into another. Translation studies is the systematic study of the theory, description and application of interpretation and translation. An interpreter is a person who converts a thought or expression in a source language into an expression with a comparable meaning in a target language either simultaneously in "real time" or consecutively when the speaker pauses after completing one or two sentences. The interpreter's objective is to convey every semantic element as well as tone and register and every intention and feeling of the message that the source-language speaker is directing to target-language recipients (except in summary interpretation, used sometimes in conferences).

The seemingly straightforward question ‘So, what do you do for a living?’ sends professional interpreters into an existential quandary; we struggle how to best answer this polite enquiry. Should we describe ourselves as translators or interpreters? The reason this question poses such a conundrum is that it is never easy to explain to others what professional conference interpreting truly involves. As it turns out, the most typical response to our carefully thought-through and well-delivered explanation is, ‘Ah, so you are a translator!’ This oft-heard response reveals that the line separating the disciplines of translation and interpreting remains blurred for many people, but if we explore each in a little more detail it will soon become clear that the professionals from each discipline engage quite different skills.
An interpreter works with spoken words in a particular context, conveying a message from one language to another, while translation refers to the activity of transferring a written text from one language to another. Neither is simply replacing the words of one language by those of another, and there are similarities in the intellectual effort required. But there are significant differences between interpreting and translating.