Here at englishpanish®, we have just closed out a particularly eventful week after having organised the most complex simultaneous interpretation service that can be provided in Europe outside the three Community headquarters (Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg) and its three most important institutions: the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Justice. I am talking, of course, about providing simultaneous interpretation services for the European institutions and their dependent bodies, outside their headquarters.
In this case, our client was the European Committee of the Regions; specifically, the Commission for Natural Resources, also known as the NAT commission. The external headquarters chosen for this event was Santiago de Compostela, the final destination of Europe’s most important pilgrimage routes.
Second day, with a conference chaired by Alfonso Rueda, President of the Galician Government.
It goes without saying that the preparation of a meeting of this sort can only be done by a translation and interpretation agency with the experience and the human resources “backbone” that Englishpanish Translation & Communication® has: 23 working languages (Bulgarian, Spanish, Czech, Danish, German, Estonian, Greek, English, French, Croatian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Finnish and Swedish), 12 interpreting booths, 18 interpreters… and all this organised in record time; less than one working week between the time englishpanish® received the notification of the contract and the opening session of the NAT meeting.
A team of four people worked full-time to track down interpreters, which was a challenge for those languages with fewer speakers, such as Swedish, Danish and Czech, given that it was a particularly busy week in Brussels and the availability of interpreters with experience in EU-related matters was rather limited. We contacted all national translator and interpreter associations in order to find the most appropriate interpreters with the necessary qualifications for an event of this prestige. Our team also undertook the task of booking flights, trains, hotels, etc. and managed all other arrangements needed to accommodate the interpreters.
Spanish-English booth, with Ignacio Urrutia interpreting.
At 8.30 AM on June 2nd, we were all ready in our respective interpretation booths to carry out an exceptional interpretation job, which received many compliments from the different organisational areas from both the European Committee of the Regions and the Xunta de Galicia. Below are just two of the many comments we received. I am highlighting these two specifically due to the significance they have in themselves and the relevance of the two people who passed them on:
“… thank you (and your colleagues) for the EXCELLENT work you did in Santiago. Professionalism, flexibility and highest quality: many thanks on behalf of the whole NAT commission…”
“… you were all UNBELIEVABLE. I have never felt so calm and in control at an external event. You made everything so professionally, so smoothly, so elegantly. It was sheer pleasure working with you…”
In this regard, I cannot forget to express my thanks to the staff from both entities for their outstanding collaboration; Serafino Nardi, Dorota Tomalak and Luca Venosta (from the EU team) and Eva Lorenzo Queiro, María Aguado Álvarez and María Jesús Hervada (from the Galician government team). It was them who made it possible for us to carry out our work in the best possible conditions as they prepared us with the necessary materials (such as agendas and draft speeches) with enough time for our interpreters to study them.
I also would like to thank the commendable work and equipment provided by the company in charge of the technical side of the event, Videlio, who ensured our use of the most advanced interpreting booths and consoles on the market today. To the company’s two main managers, Nicolas Lavisse and Dunnis Hong, I send many thanks.
Videlio’s state-of-the-art interpreting console.
Finally, of course, a big thank you and congratulations go out to all our management team, project managers and interpreters: María Jesús, Xerezade, Christian, Ignacio, Christina, Beatrice, Francesca, Sylvia, Marie, Lara, Jasmin, Ursel, Katarzyna, Kasia, Martin, Simona, Wouter, Cristina and Zoltán. You did an extraordinary job and produced results that will be hard to surpass.
As the director of this wonderful team that is a real family behind the name and logo, it makes me feel tremendously proud to have been able to listen and read all the positive comments first-hand myself. The feedback we received encourages me to keep leading this company, Englishpanish Translation & Communication®, which was created with the goal of positioning itself as a leader in the field of translation between English and all Hispanic languages (in the historical sense of the word (Iberian, including Portuguese)). Today, we find ourselves not only positioned as one of the leading companies in this field but also have gone beyond the Iberian language frameworks and have shown that we are able to offer highly qualified translation and interpretation in more than eighty languages.
Thank you all.
