Editing Language interpretation (section)

===The progressive shift from consecutive to simultaneous===
[[File:Simultandolmetscheranlage.jpg|thumb|Simultaneous interpreter's station (Televic Conference) at the [[European Court of Justice]]]]

[[Pavel Palazchenko]]'s ''My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter'' gives a short history of modern interpretation and of the transition from its consecutive to simultaneous forms. He explains that during the nineteenth century, interpreters were rarely needed during European diplomatic discussions; these were routinely conducted in French, and all government diplomats were required to be fluent in this language. Most European government leaders and heads of state could also speak French.<ref name=pala>[[Pavel Palazchenko]], ''My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter'' (Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), pp.&nbsp;32–33.</ref> Historian [[Harold Nicolson]] attributes the growing need for interpretation after World War I to the fact that U.S. President [[Woodrow Wilson]] and British Prime Minister [[David Lloyd George]] "were no linguists".<ref>Nicolson, Harold (2009) [1933]. ''Peacemaking, 1919''. London: Faber and Faber. {{ISBN|978-0-571-25604-4}}.</ref> At the time, the concept and special equipment needed for simultaneous interpretation, later patented by [[Alan Gordon Finlay]], had not been developed, so consecutive interpretation was used.<ref name=pala />

Consecutive interpreters, in order to be accurate, used a specialized system of note-taking which included symbols, abbreviations and acronyms. Because they waited until the speaker was finished to provide interpretation, the interpreters then had the difficult task of creating from these notes as much as half an hour of free-flowing sentences closely matching the speaker's meaning. Palazchenko cites {{ill|Anton Velleman|de}}, [[Jean Herbert]] and the Kaminker brothers as skilled interpreters, and notes one unusual case in which André Kaminker interpreted a speech by a French diplomat who spoke for two and a half hours without stopping.<ref name=pala />

After World War II, simultaneous interpretation came into use at the [[Nuremberg trials]] and began to be more accepted. Experienced consecutive interpreters asserted that the difficulties of listening and speaking at the same time, adjusting for differences in sentence structure between languages, and interpreting the beginning of a sentence before hearing its end, would produce an inferior result. As well, these interpreters, who to that point had been prominent speakers, would now be speaking invisibly from booths.<ref name=pala />

In 1951, when the United Nations expanded its number of working languages to five (English, French, Russian, Chinese and Spanish), consecutive interpretation became impractical in most cases, and simultaneous interpretation became the most common process for the organization's large meetings.<ref name="Jalón2004">Jesús Baigorri Jalón. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=iB5TPUXyXioC Interpreters at the United Nations. A history]''. Universidad de Salamanca; 2004. {{ISBN|978-84-7800-643-4}}. p. 29–30.</ref> Consecutive interpretation, which provides a more fluent result without the need for specialized equipment, continued to be used for smaller discussions.<ref name=pala />