Hear, Say

U.N. interpreters, 2012                                               UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Speaking a foreign language is a complicated enough task for the brain, but imagine simultaneously saying in one language what you're hearing in another. Now imagine doing that in the pressured atmosphere of someplace like the United Nations, where a misunderstanding could potentially blow up into an international incident. Small wonder that, as one interpreter says, "after an hour, your brain explodes." Here, interpreters who translated for Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad talk about the challenges and rewards of their profession: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/25/interpreters-world-events-gorbachev-reagan-deng-xiaoping-ahmadinejad