The principle and note-taking
The interpreter listens to a two- to five-minute passage while taking notes, then renders it in full. Those notes are not a transcript: they are a personal symbolic system, taught in interpreting schools, that captures the logical structure, figures and proper nouns rather than the words.
The advantage: no equipment
No booth, no console, no receivers, no technician. The interpreter simply stands beside the speaker, with a microphone if the room has one. For an official dinner, an inauguration, a factory visit or a fifteen-person meeting, this saves several thousand euros compared with a full simultaneous setup.
The drawback: time
Consecutive doubles the length of every intervention. A twenty-minute speech takes forty. Across a full conference day this is impractical; for an opening address it is perfectly acceptable.
It also works well with only one target language. With two, each intervention is tripled — exhausting for the audience.
Pricing
Consecutive uses one interpreter and no equipment at all: no booth, console, receivers or technician. The total is therefore well below an equivalent simultaneous setup. See our pricing page.
