Interpreters and Conference Interpreting

Hi,

A question for qualified interpreters who have enough work to live off (from a future C.I. student, fingers crossed): What is the lifestyle like? I read elsewhere in these forums that many interpreters work 60-120 days per annum - what do you do for the other two-thirds of the year? Do you earn enough to take nice holidays, to de-stress, etc.? Where are you based? Does an interpreter need, realistically, to live in a large hub like Paris or Geneva to be close to work, or do some of you live in peripheral countries and travel to work, as needed?

A somewhat related question, but perhaps not related to the 'fun': when interpreters are flown out to work somewhere farflung and have to stay in a hotel for some nights, does the organisation/client pay? Sorry for the naivete.

Hello,

Don't forget that to the actual days of interpreting, you have to add the days of preparation for the conferences, which often cover technical issues. You have to do some research, prepare glossaries and so on, which can fill up several days for difficult meetings.
Hotels, meals and travel should be covered by the client.

The lifestyle can vary a lot. It depends where you work, how much you work and how many other people are dependent on what you earn.
I'll leave aside staff interpreters, as they work most days of the week, most of the year, and get incremental pay rises most years. Very different from freelancers.

Freelance interpreters' daily fees and hours look amazing when you are 25 or 30. But they won't change much by the time your 50. And if you have 2 kids at university you will have less spare money than for a single 25 year old with no kids. The only way to earn more, is to work more. And that is not always something you have control over.

60-120 days a year: yes. And mid-July to September is usually free (or unpaid holiday, call it what you will) because there are very few meetings during that period. But for the rest of the year the work is spread out, rather than bunched together. It's not like you work for 4 months and then take the rest of the year off. You basically need to be available for work a lot. So you will work a lot of 1, 2 or 3-day weeks, hoping that someone offers you another day at the last minute. That means that long-weekends are easy to organise, but a 3 month trip to South America takes you off the market and out of recruiters' reckoning.

How good a living you make depends on how much you work, which depends on the quality of your work and the marketability of your language combination in the market you choose to work on. I would say, yes, you do need to live in a big hub, like Paris or Geneva, unless you are an established intepreter with a sought-after language combination. That is because, and this answers you other question, your employer should/will pay your travel expenses if you have to travel to a meeting. But they like to keep it to a minimum and so they recruit local interpreters wherever possible. So the best bet is to live near the work... in Paris, Brussels, Geneva etc

But freelance interpreters can also turn down work if they don't want it. So if you want a break, you can take one. It's your decision. People with kids, or other projects a part from work like this freedom. The flip-side is no sick-pay or paid holiday. Some people don't like that.

In short. It's a great job. If you like that sort of thing.

andy