A technical consultation is a conversation between specialists, and an interpreter who does not understand the subject slows it to a crawl. Our network includes interpreters who trained as engineers, physicists, physicians and geologists before they became linguists, and interpreters who have spent so many years on nuclear, aerospace, oil and gas and medical assignments that they can follow a discussion of pump curves or dosimetry without asking anyone to slow down.
We have interpreted for design reviews, factory acceptance tests, commissioning of equipment, failure investigations, laboratory exchanges and the kind of consultation where a visiting specialist spends a week with a client's team working through a problem. Most of this is consecutive work at a table or on a site, often with drawings and a laptop in the middle, and the interpreter has to be as comfortable with a cross-section as with a sentence. For consultations with a larger audience we bring portable simultaneous equipment.
Preparation matters more here than anywhere else. Send us the specifications, the drawings, the previous reports and any glossary your organization uses, and we will select the interpreter whose background fits and give him the time to read. Where a project runs for weeks, the same interpreter stays with it from the first meeting to the last, so that nothing has to be explained twice. Our technical interpretation rates start at $100 per hour for consecutive work and $150 per hour for simultaneous, with a four-hour minimum. Tell us the field, the dates and the location, and we will propose the right person.
