Five years as an interpreter, and how it’s going now

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Five years as an interpreter…and how it’s going now!

In the mid 20teens, I caught the interpreting bug! I had always been interpreting-curious, but remote interpreting wasn’t much of a thing pre-COVID, and my main reason for going freelance was to spend more time with my then-infant daughter, so I pretty much gave up on interpreting. 

But then, my daughter grew up (as children tend to do!), I was wrapping up my term on the American Translators Association Board, and I was ready for something new. In 2018, I had a “now or never” moment with interpreting (I was then 47, and thought I needed to get moving on this goal if it was ever going to happen), studied for a year and a half for the Colorado state-level French court interpreter exam, passed that in 2019, and interpreted in the Colorado courts for about six months before COVID hit and everything ground to a halt. 

Conference interpreting was always my goal, but (for reasons I would stick with today), I decided to start with court, and I actually love court interpreting. It just doesn’t pay that well when you’re doing mostly minimum charge assignments, and there’s not a full-time demand for French interpreters in the U.S. courts. The obstacle to getting a conference interpreting degree had always been logistical: there are no MCI programs anywhere near my home, my husband’s job isn’t portable, my daughter was in high school, etc. etc., but COVID changed all of that. I hate to mention any upside of a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans, but all of a sudden, there was the option to do a conference interpreting degree online. I jumped on it, passed the advanced entry exams for the Glendon College/York University MCI, and finished the program in 2021. I took the exit exams five years ago this week, so it seemed an opportune time to take a look back! 

Executive summary: I’ll always love translating and writing, *and* pursuing interpreting is, hands-down, one of the best career decisions I’ve made in over 20 years of freelancing. Interpreting involves a kind of quick thinking that I really enjoy, and I really enjoy the person-to-person aspect, rather than wondering whether anyone actually read the thing I worked so hard to translate. Diplomatic interpreting (my original goal) really hasn’t worked out for me, but who knows for the future. And I think that the next five years will tell us a lot about where automated interpreting is headed. 

How it’s going, five years in

If you want to read about my interpreting preparation process, the two posts linked above will tell you. If you really want to be an interpreter, training is key. There are a lot of self-taught translators out there who do really good work, and the market doesn’t seem to care that they’re self-taught. In my opinion, those things are less true in the interpreting world: I think that trained interpreters generally have much better skills than self-taught interpreters, and many more clients want a certified or trained interpreter. So first off, my answer to, “Does an interpreting certification or degree make a difference??” is a resounding “Yes.” Unfortunately, a lot of conference interpreting programs are closing, so there are fewer options. Try the AIIC Schools Directory for options! 

I also think that the Glendon MCI program prepared me really well for the real world of interpreting. The cost (US $19,000 for international student tuition) was much less than the other programs I looked at, and the instructors were top-notch. Sadly, the program is not accepting students for next year (no final decision on whether it will be revived in the future). 

When I finished the Glendon program, I had modest expectations for my interpreting work volume. I’m not sure if I’m the only one who thought this, but I assumed that most things would go back to in-person once COVID wound down. There’s very little conference interpreting work where I live, and I’m not really interested in moving to a major city. So I thought, well, at least I’ll be a better court interpreter, and if conference interpreting comes my way, I’ll take it. 

Spoiler: I was completely wrong about this. At least in the court and conference markets I work in, most things have remained remote, or the interpreters are remote even when the event is in person or hybrid. My sense is that most clients simply don’t want to pay travel expenses, unless there’s absolutely no way around it. I had a vague idea that “success” would mean interpreting about 50 days a year, let’s say once a week. But in 2025, I interpreted 95 days in court and 95 days for conferences/non-court for a total of 190 days (this year looks similar). In part, I radically underestimated the shift to remote interpreting, and in part, I radically underestimated the demand for French in court. 

What about diplomatic interpreting?

I always thought that I was meant for diplomatic interpreting. My parents used to work for the State Department, I know a number of people connected to foreign service, and I have dual Switzerland-U.S. citizenship, which seemed like it would open up a lot of possibilities. And yet, for various reasons both within and outside of my control, this hasn’t worked out for me at all. I’m providing this information purely as data, not in any way to criticize the other entities involved. 

I started the U.S. State Department application process almost as soon as I got my exit exam results from Glendon. The first time I applied, I was told that all of the applications they received during a certain time period were lost in either an IT system transition or an employee transition, and I had to apply again. The second time, various people told me it would look advantageous to get recommendations from current State Department contract interpreters, which I did. I was also hopeful that because I worked as a FBI Contract Linguist in the early 2000s and had Top Secret security clearance, the background check wouldn’t be too big of a deal. Instead, after a lot of waiting and multiple followups, the State Department told me that they’re no longer testing French interpreters, so that’s it for now. 

I also immediately applied for AIIC Pre-Candidate status. For that, you just need three AIIC members (in any language pair) to sign for you, then you have three years to get 150 days of conference interpreting experience, plus three sponsors who have been AIIC members for at least five years, two of whom have to be in your region. After three years, I had no sponsors, so I discontinued my membership for now. 

Getting AIIC sponsors can be either no big deal (if you work in a market with a lot of AIIC members), or very difficult (if you don’t). I would give myself a C+ for effort on this; really, it’s on me that it didn’t work out. That being said, I feel like the key to AIIC is in-person networking. As soon as you get approved as a pre-candidate, start going to their in-person events, even if you have to travel to do it. To me, that’s how you get to know people who might work with you and ultimately sponsor you, and that’s what I didn’t do. I made some attempts (doing online interpreter practice groups, networking by e-mail), but the conference interpreting culture is based much more on in-person stuff. I’m filing this under: not right now. It’s something I might revisit if I move to Europe at some point. 

The big question: automated interpreting

When I think about my next five years as an interpreter, the big question is automated interpreting. So far, my only encounter with automated interpreting is a client who hires live interpreters because they hate their automated interpreting system and it can’t understand French Canadian accents. Job security! But I’ve said for a while that although interpreting is harder than translation to automate, the incentives to do so are greater. Interpreting is expensive, and logistically complicated. There are people whose full-time job is “interpreter scheduler,” and automated interpreting could replace not only the actual interpreters, but the not insignificant logistical infrastructure around them. 

Lots of questions here: Does anyone want to listen to automated interpreting? Will it ever work on speakers with accents, fast-talkers, cultural references, sports idioms, etc.? Honestly, who knows? After literally decades of incremental advances in machine translation, ChatGPT stormed onto the scene and upended a lot of people’s careers, so I think we really won’t know about interpreting until we live through it! 

Otherwise, that’s it! I’m really, really happy that I decided to pursue interpreting, and my work volume is now about 60% interpreting and about 40% translation and writing. I hope this story is helpful if you’re thinking about pursuing interpreting!