Without Them the United Nations Would be a Tower of Babel

Without its multilingual interpreters, the United Nations’ work would come to a screeching halt. 

You can read about their work in my new article on swissinfo.com. 

Here are some additional photos from my morning in the English language interpreters booth in Geneva with Rebecca Edgington and Dan Harrison.

Interpreters prefer to receive written text of a
delegate's statement, even if it's only minutes
before he or she speaks, so they can familiarize
themselves with phraseology and technical jargon.

Dan Harrison translating from Spanish into English. He also translates
from French.

Smartphone multi-lingual dictionaries help
interpreters make sure they've got exactly the
right word. Rebecca Edgington translates from
Russian, German or French into English.

Edgington says she loves the second-by-second, word-by-word challenge 

of interpreting on the fly.