Turkish Interpreting

Choosing the right mode

Interpreting is spoken, and the mode has to match the setting. Consecutive interpreting, where the speaker pauses and the interpreter renders what was said, suits notary appointments, meetings, medical consultations, depositions and site visits. It roughly doubles the time a conversation takes, which is a planning fact rather than a drawback. Simultaneous interpreting, delivered from a booth or with portable equipment while the speaker continues, suits conferences and long presentations, and normally needs two interpreters per language who alternate, because sustained simultaneous work cannot be done accurately by one person for long.

Choosing wrongly is expensive in both directions. Booking simultaneous equipment for a four-person contract meeting wastes money; scheduling a full-day conference for consecutive interpreting quietly doubles the agenda and it runs over.

Notary and official appointments

A Turkish notary will generally require an interpreter when a person who does not speak Turkish signs an instrument such as a power of attorney, a company formation document or a property undertaking. The purpose is evidential: the notary needs a record that the signatory was told, in a language they understand, what the document said. This is a specific and formal role, and it is not the same as bringing a bilingual friend along.

Because these appointments are scheduled and often time-critical, tell us the date, the notary office and the nature of the document as early as you can. Sending the draft in advance matters more here than in most settings, since an interpreter who has read the instrument beforehand can render defined terms consistently instead of improvising them at the desk.

Preparation is most of the quality

The difference between adequate and good interpreting is usually made before anyone speaks. Agendas, participant lists, slide decks, prior correspondence, product names, technical vocabulary and any acronyms your organisation uses are all worth sending ahead. Interpreters are not subject-matter specialists in your business by default, and half an hour of reading turns a generic rendering into a precise one.

Interpreters work to professional confidentiality and material shared for preparation is used for that purpose only.

Practical constraints worth knowing

Interpreting is fatiguing in a way that surprises people who have not booked it before, which is why long assignments are staffed in pairs and why breaks are scheduled rather than optional. Remote interpreting over video is workable and often sensible for short meetings, but audio quality becomes the limiting factor: a poor microphone degrades accuracy far more than it degrades ordinary conversation, because the interpreter has no context to guess from. If a session is important, a headset for each speaker is a small investment.

Where a meeting will produce documents, plan the written work separately. Interpreting the discussion of a contract does not produce a translated contract, and the two are commissioned separately. See Legal Translation in Turkey and Turkish Notary Translation.

Related reading: translating a power of attorney in Turkey and translation services for international business.