The register
Everything, in one list
All 20 pieces, in section order. The front page carries an edit of this; here is the whole thing.
| Piece | What it covers | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Courtroom 600 and its four channels | Simultaneous interpreting was built at scale for one trial, with four working languages running at once and equipment nobody had used that way before. | The pair |
| Thirty minutes | Interpreters swap at roughly half-hour intervals because accuracy measurably degrades after that, which is why the job is staffed in pairs. | The pair |
| Relay, and what it costs | When no interpreter has both languages, the speech goes through a third — and every relay adds delay and one more chance to lose something. | The pair |
| What the ear drops first | Under load the first things to go are numbers, names and lists, which is why they are written down rather than remembered. | The pair |
| The whole shift | A meeting day is longer than the speaking day, and preparation is most of the work. | The pair |
| What ISO 17100 asks for | The standard specifies qualifications, a second qualified person revising the whole text, and records — because the failure it exists to prevent is physical. | The second pair of eyes |
| Somebody else reads it first | Revision by a second translator is not proofreading; it is a comparison against the source, line by line. | The second pair of eyes |
| A step in the wrong order | The instructive failures are the ones where a translated procedure inverted two steps, which is why this trade has a standard at all. | The second pair of eyes |
| What machine output changes | Post-editing is a different job from translating, with a different failure mode: the errors are fluent. | The second pair of eyes |
| One object, one name | Terminology work is deciding that within this document set a thing has exactly one designation, and enforcing it. | Who decides the name |
| Wüster in Vienna | The discipline has a founding figure and a doctoral thesis behind it, and the fact that it began with electrical engineering is not an accident. | Who decides the name |
| When two departments disagree | Most terminology disputes are not linguistic; they are two parts of an organisation having meant different things for years. | Who decides the name |
| The database nobody reads | A term base only works if it is in the translator's tool at the moment of writing, not in a document somebody must remember to open. | Who decides the name |
| A booth is a specification | Sightline, air changes, sound insulation and console layout are all specified, because the booth is the working environment and not a cupboard. | A booth is a specification |
| Filene, Finlay, a box of headsets | The first equipment was a philanthropist's idea, an engineer's build and a great deal of cable. | A booth is a specification |
| Permanent and mobile | A built-in booth and a flight-cased one solve the same problem with entirely different compromises. | A booth is a specification |
| Sound arrives before speech | The interpreter hears the floor a fraction before the audience does, and that fraction is engineered. | A booth is a specification |
| Brussels | The largest concentration of institutional language work in the world, and the logistics that go with it. | Three cities |
| Luxembourg | Court work is a different discipline again: precision under precedent, with the text as the instrument. | Three cities |
| Geneva | Multilateral conference work, and the standing arrangements that make it repeatable. | Three cities |