As a co>lab participant, you are responsible for preparing one 20-minute speech, more like a presentation, that your colleagues will interpret simultaneously. You’ll need to prepare presentation slides for your speech ahead of time, which your colleagues will use to prepare.
If slides don’t seem relevant to your particular speech, you can provide speaking notes. We just want to have something to set our colleagues up for success!
Your simultaneous speech
Your speech should be:
- Around 20 minutes long
- Delivered in your mother tongue
- Something you’re interested in and can speak about in-depth and competently
- Realistic and challenging
- Extemporaneous and not read from a script
- Written with a specific audience in mind
How to prepare your speech, step-by-step:
- Decide on a topic. This should be quite specific. You are asked to indicate this topic when you register.
- Create a presenter persona. Who are you? What organization do you represent? What is your job title?
- Define your audience. Ideally your audience is comprised of experts in your field but who will have something to glean from your particular presentation.
- Download and fill out the co>lab title slide. Then add it to your presentation deck. This will help create a realistic scenario and allow your colleagues to prepare more efficiently.
- Upload your presentation slides to the co>lab group drive. Your organizers will send out a link to the group drive down the line.
An Example: coffee
Let’s take a real example. First, most of what we do as conference interpreters is expert to expert communication, so we need to recreate that.
Let’s say my topic is coffee. I will first pick a specific aspect of coffee: post-harvest processing.
Next, I create a persona. I am the Southeastern Regional Director of Sales for CounterMounter Coffee Roasters.
Then, an expert audience: a group of Baristas. Baristas are coffee experts, but often know less about what happens to coffee at the farm level. I’d like to fill in some gaps for them and get them excited about the expertise my roastery has to offer.
Consecutive speeches (Optional)
Though not required, we also need participants to give a 5-minute speech for consecutive interpretation. If you’d like to volunteer, indicate your topic on the co>lab registration form, or send us an e-mail.
For additional advice on developing and delivering speeches, see this DG Interpretation Guide on Speechmaking.
co>lab interpreting intensive 