Name: How the UN Translates Everything in Real-Time
Uploaded: 2024-07-11T12:20:48.000Z
Duration: 8 min 30 s
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Last week, as one does, I was peeping some UN pics, and I noticed something—big, boxy, earpieces everywhere.

Do these plug you into the Illuminati mainframe?

Is T-Swift farming streams in the Security Council?

I put my outside correspondent Amy on the case, and turns out… no.

Instead, these things are how diplomats get reliable, real-time translations for every sentence spoken on the UN floor.

But where do those translations come from?

Who's voice is in the earpiece, and how do they do it so fast?

The first thing you need to know is that the UN has six official languages—Arabic, British,

English, French, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.

That means, among other things, that if you're sitting at a meeting in the General Assembly, anything you read or hear will be available to you in all six.

It does not, however, mean that all the signs around you will be in Arabic—those are in

English and French, the two working languages of the UN's executive branch, i.e. the ones the operation gets managed in.

But if you're actually doing peace talks rather than communicating what's on the second floor, all six are in play.

Every seat in the GA and Security Council, from the nosebleeds to the big ones, has an earpiece and some little buttons you hit until you hear your language of choice, or the ever-mysterious unknown, which I'm guessing is either Simlish, Toddler, or Marshmallow and Mouth.

The disembodied voice you'll hear isn't actually that far away—in fact, you can see them from where you're sitting.

The interpretation booths are right up here, each labeled with their language.

There are industry standards for just about everything inside—the lighting, the air circulation, the soundproofing, how comfortable the chairs are, but a copy of that standard costs 96 Swiss francs for some reason, so we're gonna live without the details.

Each booth must always have at least two interpreters inside—which, by the way, is the word we should be using here—translators, in this context, handle written stuff, while interpreters do the blabbing.

Anyway, every interpreter in the UN is a native speaker of their booth's language, i.e.

they interpret into the language they know best, since it takes more language mastery to communicate your thoughts than to understand someone else's.

Someone staffing the French booth, for example, either grew up speaking French, went to school in French, or both—if a diplomat's speaking Spanish, the French interpreter spits it out in French.

If she's speaking French, the folks in the French booth go chill mode while the other five interpret.

The UN tends to staff the booths such that each one can cover at least three of the six official languages—so the Russian booth, for example, might contain two lifelong Russian speakers, both of whom can understand English, one of whom can understand French, and one of whom can understand Chinese.

But what happens if someone on the floor is speaking a language a booth doesn't have covered?

What if someone's talking in Arabic, and nobody in the Spanish booth understands it, and vice versa?

In this case, they employ what's called a relay system.

Maybe there aren't any Arabic-Spanish interpreters, but there is a Spanish interpreter that knows

So an Arabic interpreter would exit chill mode and interpret the speech from Arabic to English for the person in the Spanish booth, who would then interpret that from

English to Spanish, so when you'd turn your earpiece to Spanish, you'd hear an interpretation of an interpretation of a speech, all in near real-time.

This happens pretty often—English-Spanish interpreters are a dime a dozen, but what about Russian-Spanish, Arabic-Spanish, Chinese-French?

In fact, the UN needs a relay system so often when interpreting from Arabic and Chinese that all the interpreters who work in those two booths must be able to interpret both into their language, like normal, and out of it, for relay purposes.

This means there are often three people in those booths instead of two, and that they very rarely get to experience chill mode.

To avoid muddling things too much, the UN only allows one middleman language when they go into a relay system, so while you could hear words that went from Arabic to English to Spanish, they wouldn't give you a live interpretation that had gone from Arabic to

English to Russian to Chinese, then back to Arabic for kicks, then to unknown, then to

But Sam, you've surely wondered by now, there are 49 countries that don't widely speak one of the six UN languages, according to the Wikipedia page I'm looking at.

What if someone gives a speech in Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi?

If you want to speak any language outside of the six, you have to provide an interpreter who can interpret live from your language into one of the six, then the UN staff will get it from there into the remaining five.

As far as I can tell, the UN keeps about 120 interpreters in their full-time staff, and they're tough spots to get.

The UN only offers exams for each language combination roughly every three years, and you need a lot of qualifications to even take one, and if you ace it, and nail all the following tests and interviews, you get a two-year appointment, after which they'll either promote you, or let you go.

You can also land amongst the freelancers—the people the UN calls upon when they don't have enough interpreters around to cover what they have going on.

Fun fact, freelance interpreters at the UN make a devilish $666 a day, which I know because I read the UN and the Interpreters Association 34-page Freelance Employment Agreement for fun, and I didn't even have to fork over 96 Swiss francs for the privilege.

From 1984 to 1985—the only year for which I could find the stat I wanted—the UN spent a total of $78 million US dollars on interpretation, equivalent to over $235 million today.

But of course interpretation is expensive.

Being able to tune in live to what's being said in front of you in a completely different language than the one being spoken is basically magic.

Mind you, when some guys did it in the Bible, it counted as a miracle—they made it a holiday!

Now interpreters do it every day, and where's their holiday?

Well, the first Wednesday in May, actually, but what are you doing to celebrate?

Doing a live interpretation demands a combination of preparation, skill, and instinct.

To prep, interpreters get some advanced information about the meeting they're covering.

They'll know the subject matter and niche jargon they may come across, plus they get advanced copies of the documents attendees will have, and sometimes even a copy of the speeches people are planning to deliver.

They're trained to understand every regional accent of the language they're interpreting from, and they know how to maintain the perfect delay between when the speaker is talking and when they start interpreting.

They need to delay enough that they can understand people's full idea before they start repeating it, but if they delay too much, they might give themselves too much to recall from short-term memory while also trying to listen to what the speaker is still saying.

Interpreters have to match their speaker's tone and anticipate the end of their sentences to keep up pace.

They can't ask speakers to slow down or repeat themselves—they just have to nail it and keep listening.

Also, this is all happening at about 120 words per minute—as fast as an average Biden State of the Union.

Neurologists are still trying to figure out exactly how they do it, but one study found that interpretation doesn't just use the parts of the brain that processes language or talks—it draws on capacity from other parts of the brain that handle movement and stuff just to coordinate all that listening, processing, interpreting, and speaking.

And if that sounds exhausting to you, it is!

Staff interpreters only cover seven or eight meetings, each three hours long, per week.

And during those meetings, they'll swap out with another interpreter every 20-30 minutes, lest they tucker their brains out and threaten a country with juice and s'mores instead of nuclear wars.

Because sure, little errors in the live interpretations get cleaned up before entering the record, but big errors just can't happen.

I mean, it's the UN—there's almost nowhere that knowing exactly what someone else said matters more.

So, here's to you, UN interpreters, up in your boxes, making diplomacy happen from the sidelines.

You deserve some nuclear war—no, uh, juice and s'mores—man, I'm not cut out for this job.

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