Preparation is essential, whether working face-to-face with people in a hospital or immigration office, or in a booth at the back of a meeting room. But before taking a look at the why and how of preparation, let’s get a couple of things clear.
First, interpreting of any kind is not simply about knowing languages; that’s just a prerequisite for a job that’s all about conveying what a speaker says. Within the communication process, a language is no more than raw material waiting to be formed into a finished product – the message. And to perform the task successfully, interpreters must have a complete grasp of subject matter and the context they are working in.
From this it follows that translation is not about finding one-for-one word equivalents. To fashion a finished product greater than the sum of its parts, many resources come into play – knowledge, contextualization, rapid analysis, cohesion, subtlety of expression, correct terminology, etc.
And that brings us back to preparation because that is the stage during which all these elements are readied. Compare it to the research a biographer does before sitting down to write. Or think of the accomplished speaker you’ve invited who expressly gets ready to address your group – that’s part of what has made him successful.