French Translation and Interpreting

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco is adored by French people, who see it as a much more European city than other megapolises like New York City and Los Angeles. Maybe it’s the city’s numerous traditional Victorian homes or the famous Golden Gate Bridge. French interpreters based in San Francisco do have to travel quite a bit – but that’s not a problem.  For Pablo Chang-Castillo—Co-owner and Interpretation Services Manager at Chang-Castillo and Associates and Calliope Interpreters representative for the US—San Francisco is not only CCA’s headquarters, it is a major world conference city and the gateway to the Pacific (and through it, to Asia – Japan, Korea, China, etc.). Being close to San Jose and the Silicon Valley (the heart of the IT, software, and technology industry), the City by the Bay is also only a one hour’s flight away from Los Angeles (with its entertainment, movie, and music industries), two hours from Seattle (with world-renowned companies such as Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, and Amazon), and five hours from the United Nations headquarters in New York City  and countless international organizations in Washington, DC.

New York City, NY

When France gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States—proudly displayed in New York City’s harbor—it forever sealed an alliance between the two nations. To this day, the NYC interpretation market boasts a remarkably high total in interpreter workdays, including for French. The workload is highly concentrated at the United Nations headquarters, much of which is covered by UN staff interpreters. Whether you are a staffer or a freelancer, having a relevant UN language combination like French is essential. This is by and large true for the side-events in the UN orbit as well.

Another noteworthy feature of the NYC market is that of seasonal booms and busts. Several times each year, the UN meeting count swells well beyond what the staffers can manage and there is work aplenty for freelancers, many of which are UN retirees in most cases well-versed in the topics and language of the UN. The greater NYC area also has a robust community interpretation market, especially in the courts. While the bulk involves Spanish, there is a good dose of work in the court system in other languages including French, Haitian Creole, and Asian languages. While UN interpreters will usually only work into their mother tongue, working bi-directionally on the rest of the market is sine qua non. And language professionals should not forget that the UN also has staff translators, editors, and verbatim reporters.

Washington, DC

The capital of the United States is home to more than 175 foreign embassies, and is a logical venue for corporations, NGOs and non-profits alike to conduct their conferences, symposia, and business meetings. In Washington, DC, French interpreters enjoy working for a multitude of international organizations that need interpretation services on a daily basis, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the Organization of American States (OAS). The State Department’s Office of Language Services is also a top recruiter of interpreters in and around the District of Columbia.

Together with New York City, which is only about 3 hours away by train, Washington, DC is probably the only city in the US where interpreters do not have to travel for work, if they don’t want to. Don’t think however that you will always be able to find interpreters overnight – top linguists are in high demand, and booked months in advance for some of the high-level meetings held at these international organizations, which often have to hire some of their colleagues from all over the States, and even Canada and Europe.

Toronto, Canada

North of the border, in Canada, with French as an official language side by side with English, the interpretation market is flourishing – not just in Quebec where French is the dominant language of the Province, but across the country. For our colleague Hazel Cole-Egan, “French is very much part of Canada’s meeting scene.” The vast majority of Federal Government meetings are held in both languages, as are Provincial Government meetings in some cases.  Corporate Canada –banks, professional firms, and major corporations – often communicate with their employees, clients, and shareholders in both languages, as do the trade unions and professional associations.

Most of the French interpreters are to be found in Montreal and the capital city, Ottawa.  In addition, there are a fair number in Toronto, the corporate capital of Canada, with the rest scattered across the Atlantic provinces and the West. The vast majority of interpreters in Canada, working on the English-French market, are bilingual. Most are locally trained and hence familiar with the local expressions specific to French Canadian.  Interpreters raised and trained in another French-speaking country arriving in Canada to work have to acquaint themselves with the idiosyncrasies of the local language but rapidly adjust to their new reality.

Ottawa, Canada

Ottawa, Canada’s capital, is home to the Federal government’s Translation Bureau, Canada’s largest employer of interpretation services. Since Canada adopted its Official Languages Act in 1969, most of the work is done in Canada’s two official languages, English and French, and is shared among staffers and freelance interpreters who have gone through the Bureau’s rigorous accreditation process. Moreover, as the Canadian government hosts a large number of international meetings and conferences, service is also provided in many foreign languages (Spanish, Chinese and Russian among the more frequently used.) The Bureau also provides interpretation for the televised debates of the House of Commons and its and the Senate’s various committees.

The private sector is also thriving in Canada, most especially in Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, with smaller markets in the Western provinces and in the Maritimes (Canada’s easternmost provinces). Of course, as a staunch defender of the francophone culture, Quebec ensures that all its activities are carried out in French, with English interpretation provided for “guests”.

Ottawa’s proximity to New York and Washington is another advantage, as several Canadian interpreters work on occasion for the UN and other international organizations.

What better place than the Caribbean to mix four of the most popular languages in the world – Spanish, obviously, but also English and French, along with Portuguese, which has been gaining traction in the region. The Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with its neighbor, Haiti, which has been through decades of difficulties, and where French remains one of the two official languages, along with Haitian Creole, which is becoming more and more predominant.

The island is also very close to the French Indies (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, and St Barts), which are still very much part of the French Republic, to which they have very strong political, financial, economic, and cultural ties. French Guiana, an overseas department and region of France, on the north Atlantic coast of South America that borders Brazil, is home to almost 300,000 people. Needless to say, French interpreters do work in the whole region – and travel through it all.

Paris, France

France is not only the world’s #1 tourist destination,, it is also the biggest interpretation market in the world. Surprised? There are several simple reasons for this: Paris is one of Europe’s (and the world’s) most important cities, conveniently located at the center of Europe, not only with close proximity to other major European capitals like London, Berlin, and Athens, but also to major interpretation hubs such as Brussels (with the European Commission), Geneva (with multiple UN agency HQs), Rome (with the FAO and WFP headquarters), Luxembourg, Strasbourg (with the European Parliament), and The Hague (with the International Criminal Court).

Julien Brasseur, Chang-Castillo and Associates’ COO and Translation Services Manager, who was based in Paris for 6 years, knows that the Paris market is therefore very attractive to interpreters, not only due to the easy access it provides to all the other above-mentioned cities, but also for the international organizations it hosts (such as UNESCO and OECD) and its vibrant local market – Paris hosts more conferences than any other city in the world. Regardless of its status as the world’s interpretation capital, who wouldn’t want to live in one of the most gorgeous and romantic cities on Earth?

Ireland

From the Irish Saints and Scholars who founded many a monastery in medieval France, to the Flight of the Wild Geese in later centuries, Ireland and France share a long, if not tumultuous, history. In modern times, both countries have strengthened their friendship and many French citizens have happily settled on the Emerald Isle. There are very strong cultural, political, touristic, agricultural, and economic links between the two nations. This in turn means that French is the second most requested language (after Spanish) for interpretation and translation services.

Calliope-Interpreters representative in Ireland Alexandra Hambling is well-placed to understand both cultures and realities. Her hometown, the Irish capital of Dublin, is host to the European headquarters of all major software and hardware companies – Google and Facebook, but also Apple, Intel, Dell, AOL, PayPal, Microsoft, eBay, Oracle, Mentor Graphics, Amazon, Cisco, Twitter, SAP, as well as pharmaceutical and aircraft leasing companies such as Pfizer, GSK, Merck, and General Electric. Their international workforce includes many French people and the proximity to the European continent ensures French interpreters many workdays. The love of everything French by Irish people has even recently led to Ireland being accepted as an observer member of the International Organization of la Francophonie, alongside Louisiana, which also joined in 2018.

Spain
With all the various official local languages in the country, English is by far the first foreign language taught in Spain. In stark contrast with the previous generation, young CEOs and political leaders speak it much better than French. However, there are still many an opportunity to interpret from and into French at company and association meetings, as well as conferences held at the various international organizations headquartered in the country, such as the World Tourism Organization, based in the capital, Madrid.

For Calliope Interpreters representative Danielle Grée, based in the capital of Catalonia, Barcelona, the proximity of the region to France is the reason why demand for French interpretation is back up again after taking a dip during the recent economic crisis. Southern France is just as far for her as it is for a Paris-based interpreter, which means extra employment opportunities.

And let’s not forget Andorra, a principality where a Catholic Bishop and the President of France serve as co-princes, helping the French language stay very much in demand in the tiny nation and throughout the region.

Portugal

The economic crisis and the month-long efforts of the IMF in the Iberian Peninsula completely changed the country. For Laurence Corréard, Calliope Interpreters representative in Portugal, a new generation of politicians and business owners that feel very comfortable in English wrongly consider interpretation services to be superfluous. As a result, the Portuguese interpretation market has fallen in the hands of unqualified interpreters with disastrous consequences.

On the bright side however, the rise of Brazil and the African continent, the recent Rio Olympics, and the economic surge of quality tourism have attracted foreign customers and investors to Portugal and the lusophone world as new meeting, conference, and symposium destinations – a field where French interpreters still have a significant political, economic, and diplomatic role to play.

Côte d’Ivoire

French is currently spoken in about 29 of the 54 countries in Africa, totaling more French speakers than France itself. An interpreter’s dream continent, Africa is considered by many to be the future of the French language, currently spoken by around 120 million Africans. Thanks to massive population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, combined with the continued expansion of education, French has become the fastest growing language on the continent.

Calliope Interpreters’ member in Africa Victor Imboua-Niava is based in Côte d’Ivoire, where French was recognized as the official language after the country’s independence in 1960. To Victor, the type of French spoken in the country is similar to French from France, but with a few local specificities. For example, speeches in Senegal, Benin, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire tend to use very high standards of language, which most French speakers themselves would agree are usually much more polished than in French-speaking countries on the rest of the continent, such as Burkina Faso, Togo, and Niger, where they tend to be less flowery and more sober.

The speeches themselves are usually organized differently depending on whether they are originally in French or in English, a culturally significant difference that a professional interpreter is trained to bridge. Hence the need for the interpreter team to prepare for their assignments – a crucial aspect of a professional interpreter’s work – using similar speeches provided by Protocol services, glossaries, and style guides.

The massive population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is often cited as the main reason why the number of French speakers is expected to triple by 2050 to a whopping 750 million speakers in the world. The continent’s proximity to many Indian Ocean islands where French is an official language (Mayotte, Madagascar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles to name a few), combined with the headquarters of several international organizations (such as the UN HQ in Nairobi, Kenya, the African Union, ECOWAS, and many others) also ensure French interpreters a lot of work – currently and in the future.

Israel and the Middle East

Israel is home to the largest French minority immigrant community in Middle East and many French speakers in Israel make it a point of maintaining the culture of their home country. Gisèle Abazon, as Calliope Interpreters’ member in the country, is considered to be the go-to French interpreter in the country. Many of her interpretation assignments are for and into English or Hebrew and French, particularly when referring to Israel as “start-up nation”.

Its neighbor, Lebanon, designates Arabic as the sole official language, but French is also used on Lebanese bank notes, on road signs, license plates, and official buildings. In North Africa, after Arabic, French also remains an important language in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania as former French colonies.

Asia

In Asia, the French language remains a trace of France’s colonial past. While its formal use has generally been on the decline, it remains widely studied and spoken among the elderly, the highly educated, and in many institutions of higher education. It is the largest European language spoken in Asia after English. In China, the language was also spoken by the elite in the former Shanghai French Concession and in the French zone of influence over several provinces such as Guangzhou, Yunnan, and Guangdong.

The “Geneva of Asia”, Bangkok, Thailand, boasts more than 28 regional offices of the United Nations, where French is also an official language, ensuring countless days of work for interpreters residing in and around the city. It is still an administrative language in Laos and Cambodia and a diplomatic language in Vietnam. French is the principal language of higher education in these three countries, spoken by elite and elderly populations. Surprisingly, the Philippines is home to the first Alliance Française in Southeast Asia and has become one of the most active countries where French is studied.

French is even spoken in India, with de jure official status in the Indian Territory of Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) and as a cultural language in Chandannagar (formerly Chandannagore).

Australia

French is the only language other than English to be spoken on all inhabited continents. It seems pretty obvious that Australia is not considered a hub for French interpretation, so French interpreters in the region such as Calliope Interpreters’ member Bertold Schmitt do have to travel all around the world. While community interpreters are in demand in Australian courts and hospitals, many French speakers will insist on speaking their mother tongue for very high-level conferences, and their number does not seem to drop.

Oceania

Located about 1,250 miles northeast of Sydney, New Caledonia is a French collectivity where almost all 280,000 inhabitants speak French – which is still also an official language in nearby Vanuatu. French Polynesia, with its capital city, Papeete, on the island of Tahiti, also ensures that French remains vibrant, even in the middle of the South Pacific.