Conference interpreting as we know it today started at the Nuremberg Trials in 1947.  In the beginning, interpreting was very much a hit-and-miss affair but it has since evolved into a highly-specialised profession.

When the United Nations was set up, the interpreters were recruited from the ranks of multilingual intellectuals whom it was hoped would have a gift for the job. Some had…but others became completely hysterical under pressure.

Henri Methorst was a linguist with a background of law and publishing when he first tried his hand at interpreting for Jean Monnet’s Coal and Steel Community in Luxembourg. In those days back in 1953, they didn’t even have interpreters’ booths but that did not stop the outstanding individuals who were the freelance interpreters of yore.

It was round about this time that the Netherlands started to gain popularity as a venue for international conferences. In fact, between 1955 and 1963 the Netherlands hosted congresses covering virtually every medical discipline and some of these very same congresses continue to be held here today.

When the municipalities of The Hague and Amsterdam started to provide a conference service, they asked Henri Methorst to recruit and organise teams of interpreters. These included trilingual immigrants, amongst whom an art historian and an aristocrat, and also AIIC members (International Association of Conference Interpreters) from Brussels, London, Rome and Paris. Among the first Dutch colleagues, two were graduates from the Interpreters’ School in Geneva.

After gaining international recognition in the late 1950s, Methorst and his colleagues all became members of AIIC and later set up the Congrestolken co-operative for interpreters based in the Netherlands. Today this organisation has some 40 members covering a wide range of languages.

Whether interpretation is simultaneous, consecutive or whispered, it is as much an art as a science and has very little in common with written translation or précis-writing. Interpreters work at high speed and though, of course; they need both technical and scientific understanding and a wide knowledge of their working languages, that alone is not enough.  Over and above the indispensable academic training, they have to possess an intuitive feel for what they hear and be able to translate intentions and meanings and not just 'words'.