I just gained a huge amount of admiration and respect for interpreters

Thankfully, you usually interpret simultaneously for a maximum of 30-45 minutes before your colleague takes over. You still have to concentrate on what is being said, though, and write down numbers and names to make their job easier.

At least that's how it's commonly done in Germany, where I've been interpreting. I've never had to speak for more than an hour, and even then you're probably interpreting a business presentation or the like, where the speakers change sometimes and you get some short breaks.

Not saying that it's easy, though. Even after several years of practice, there are a lot of extremely stressful situations. In the worst case, your contractor is ill-prepared and you have to work with bad equipment - or they didn't tell you what the job entails exactly. Some companies will also hire too few interpreters, so that you might actually end up having to speak for several hours.

/r/languagelearning Thread