European Parliament Interpreters

Info

The European Parliament has one of the largest interpreting services in the world. As an interpreter, you can take part in the decisions that help shape Europe's future - in a great, challenging job with excellent working conditions and colleagues.

Geschiedenis

The Directorate General for Interpretation and Conferences provides quality conference interpreters in meetings organized by the European Parliament and the other Institutions it serves and provides a conference organising capacity to the European Parliament.
The Directorate General for Interpretation and Conferences supplies interpreters for all the European Parliament's meetings, as well as for other services outside the EP, including the Court of Auditors, the Committee of the Regions, the European Ombudsman, the European Data Protection Officer, the European Commission in Luxembourg and the Translation Centre. An increasing number of the Parliament's meetings are broadcast live on the internet. As well as travelling to Strasbourg every month for the plenary sessions, the EP's interpreters travel all over the world, accompanying delegations to overseas conferences, on visits to other parliaments and on election observation missions.
Meetings using all 24 official languages are held on a regular basis and other languages such as Arabic, Chinese, and Russian are also often needed. DG INTE has close links to universities training interpreters.
DG Interpretation and Conferences has 380 staff interpreters and provides some 110,000 interpreter days per year, of which about half are freelance days.

Interpreters are at the front line of multilingualism, working to ensure that language is no barrier to understanding in Europe. Whereas translators deal with the written word, interpreters make sense of the spoken word. They understand what is being said in one language and render that same message accurately and almost instantly in another. Enabling communication and facilitating dialogue, interpreters act as a bridge between cultures and often find themselves at the very heart of the decision-making process.