Language interpretation
facilitating of oral or sign-language communication between users of different languages
Interpretation is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use of external resources and tools.
The most common two modes of interpretation are simultaneous, which is performed contemporaneously with the expression of the source language, and consecutive, where the interpreted speech is heard only during associated breaks in the original speech.
Interpretation is an ancient human activity which predates the invention of writing.
History
Historiography
Research into the various aspects of the history of interpretation is quite recent. For as long as most scholarly interest was given to professional conference interpretation, very little academic work was conducted on the practice of interpretation in history, and until the 1990s, only a few dozen publications were focused on it.
Considering the amount of interpretation that is assumed to have occurred for thousands of years, historical records are limited. Moreover, interpreters and their work have usually not found their way into the history books. One of the reasons for that is the dominance of the written text over the spoken word (in the sense that those who have left written texts are more likely to be recorded by historians). Another problem is the tendency to view it as an ordinary support activity which does not require any special attention, and the social status of interpreters, who were sometimes treated unfairly by scribes, chroniclers and historians.
“Language interpretation” enters the record as facilitating of oral or sign-language communication between users of different languages. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Language, interpretation and facilitating can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q210439.
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This entry incorporates text from “Language interpretation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.