An interpreter needs an appropriate level of knowledge on the target and source language, good memory and knowledge of the surrounding world and subjects of speech besides from skills like speaking, listening, understanding and grammar because an interpreting career requires you to follow long speeches and interpret them practically immediately.

For example, interpreters often need to listen to natural speech faster than normal, as well as decoding cognitively what they hear into the target language, and finally rendering the interpretation in an accurate way.

Simultaneous interpretation is a crucial skill for aspiring and practicing interpreters to master since it is used in numerous settings, including conferences, courts medical interpreting venues, among others. It requires a lot of decision-making, attentiveness and knowledge. Here are some resources to practice and improve your interpreting skills.

1. Shadowing

Shadowing consists in repeating in the same language what a speaker says. Professionals recommend staying one thought behind the speaker since it helps people get used to the simultaneous act of talking and listening. You can listen to the audio in your second language to practice with shadowing. Once you feel comfortable talking and listening at the same time and are not leaving out too much, begin performing other tasks like writing numeral 1 to 100 on a piece of paper as you repeat what the speaker says.

Then, once your performance becomes fluent, you can begin interpreting into the target language.

2. Record your interpretations

An easy method is to listen to a famous speech and record yourself as you interpret it. Once you have done this, find the script for the speech and read it while you listen to your recording, this way you can check how accurate your interpretation was.  You can use different materials from, for example, a recorder movie, newscast or TV show by turning on the subtitles during the reviewing process.

3. Covering sentences

Another skills that is quite helpful for interpreters is the ability to predict the outcome of the message. The authors of “Fundamentals of Court Interpretation: Theory, Policy, and Practice” suggest taking a written passage and picking out random sentences to later cover up the latter half of the sentences and try to predict what the covered portions will say based on the contextual clues and previous words.

4. Rephrasing exercise

Using the same tapes you prepared for the above exercises you can rephrase what the speaker says rather than simply repeating it. When you state a message in different words, you are forcing yourself to lag behind the speaker and waiting until they say something meaningful for you to work with. This exercise helps you analyze and understand the original message and then being able to change the wording of the message without altering the meaning.