These developments are resulting in a change in awareness about conference interpreting. As in other parts of the world not too long ago, there was a generally accepted misperception that anyone with foreign language competence should be able to interpret. Now, after much frustration with bad interpretation, more users have learnt that professional service is indispensable, and conference interpreting is increasingly regarded as a highly demanding and intellectually challenging job. In the high-end private market sector, only with professional credentials and significant experience in their resumes, and in some cases solid references as well, are interpreters able to convince conference organisers of their competence to provide this critical and increasingly less-underestimated link in their conference package.

V. Professional practices and working conditions

With the local AIIC members taking the lead, conference interpreters in China have been making relentless efforts in promoting the profession and advocating and communicating best practices. The major references for professional practice are the AIIC standards and sample contracts. While each interpreter may have his or her own variation based on these, the basics remain within the range generally acceptable to the conference interpretation community. Terms and conditions are often discussed and communicated among colleagues and adjusted accordingly, and professional fees have increased steadily to come in line with international levels.

Signing a contract has not been an established practice for interpreting services, particularly when it comes to a contract between an organisation and an interpreter in his or her personal capacity. Unless the interpreter makes a particular effort, clients may not even realise the need for a contract in the interests of both parties. Some clients can be reluctant to sign a written contract, and payment in the event of the cancellation or rescheduling of a conference, or even the last-minute substitution of interpretation personnel by the client (yes, it has happened), can be highly problematic.

The dominant conference languages are Chinese and English, and the majority of conferences are served by one two-way booth per room. The markets for interpretation between Chinese and other languages like Japanese, French, and German are much smaller. In multi-language conferences organised locally, the relay language is almost always Chinese (but could be English or French if the organiser were to choose to recruit an international team and had the financial resources to do so). In practice, for example, this means that at a conference with English, French, and Chinese, a French speaker would typically be interpreted into Chinese by a Chinese A interpreter in the Chinese/French booth, and English interpretation would then be provided via relay from Chinese by another Chinese A interpreter in the Chinese/English booth.

Technical conditions range from heaven to hell. Some top-end venues, like the international conference centres in Beijing and Shanghai and the China World Hotel in Beijing, have professionally built booths and audio-visual systems that match the best facilities internationally. At the other end of the spectrum are booths that demonstrate total ignorance of the requirements of conference interpreting. The White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, wonderful as it may be in every other respect as a five-star hotel, has allowed only enough space for one small chair in each booth.

Mobile booths are often used as substitutes in the absence of fixed facilities. These can, however, turn out to be nothing but a windshield-like piece of plastic set on a table somewhere in the conference hall. Then there are the plywood booths with saran-wrap windows, the booths with rough-hewn glass so thick that it approximates a fish-eye lens, and the booths which are behind the stage and do not have a view of the room....

Acoustics are generally supported by standard SI equipment from well-known international manufacturers. A fact of life for the conference interpreter in China, however, is the omnipresent mobile phone and its nerve-racking disturbances. Any use of these gadgets around certain SI systems - even receiving an incoming call with the ringer turned off - creates serious distortion in the interpreters' headphones. Given that 90 out of a hundred local delegates at a product launch may have a mobile phone, and that the contraption's piercing jangle was an extra acoustic feature even at Yo-Yo Ma's concert in Beijing, this will continue to be a headache - literally - until these systems are replaced by ones that are cellular-resistant.

Despite, or perhaps because of, all these gripes about technical conditions, the equipment companies have made commendable progress in their understanding of operational requirements and in improving their technical support. Competition in the equipment market, especially at the higher end, is making equipment providers benchmark against professional standards and the needs of the interpreters. The best policy, however, is to communicate requirements clearly to the organiser, insist on proper working conditions, and bring a mild pain-killer just in case.

VI. Intermediation and organisation: Let a hundred flowers bloom

The organisation of government and business in China has changed dramatically as a result of rapid institutional reform and the development of the private economy. In this dynamic transition period, a new market order is gradually taking shape through the interaction of multiple actors whose respective roles are presently in flux.

In the world of interpreting, this is reflected in a blurring of the lines between public and private. Some institutions offer the services of their staff interpreters on the private market, and others have even spun off their interpretation functions to become income-generating units. In other cases, staff members take paid outside assignments with the permission of their work unit, and pay out of their fees a commission to their institution, part of which may even be distributed among their colleagues who worked in-house while they were working outside.

While perhaps somewhat confusing at first glance, this trend is in keeping with the context of today's China, given that most professional interpreters are full-time staff somewhere and derive job-related benefits from that status, that the conference market is growing fast and pays what in terms relative to a government salary are extremely high fees, that local clients tend to trust a government-affiliated unit more than a private service provider and the collective more than the individual, and that such an arrangement is financially beneficial to both the work unit and the employee and helps retain staff who might otherwise leave to go fully freelance.

On the other side of the coin, there has been a proliferation of private translation agencies and English schools offering all kinds of T&I services, including simultaneous interpretation. As elsewhere in the world, these are highly variable operations in terms of professionalism and quality, but do tend to be clustered toward the lower end of the market. A number of these outfits now even offer profit-oriented training in simultaneous interpreting to the English-learning public, and enrolment seems to be high, reflecting an awareness of the fees commanded by professionals but not of the demands of professional practice. A more significant source of work for conference interpreters is the higher-end intermediation service, like international PR companies and PCOs.

No co-operative bureaux per se have yet been formed by the interpreters, for the interpreters, although, as elsewhere, freelances build up a client base and recruit one another for conferences they are working at, and a number of colleagues are becoming more active on the co-ordinating side.

VII. Training and accreditation

With the growth in demand for high-quality interpretation, the need for training in interpreting in general has expanded significantly. Training of some kind is now being offered at more institutions and in more formats than ever before.

In 2000, interpreting was made a compulsory course for all undergraduates majoring in English, and is now taught in most BA programmes as a one-year course in the fourth year. This new requirement has generated a great deal of interest in interpretation pedagogy, and many teachers called upon to teach interpreting have expressed the need for instructor training and for curriculum development at the national level.

New postgraduate programmes and courses in T&I are being offered at increasing numbers of institutions, including Xiamen University, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing Second Foreign Language Institute, and Shanghai International Studies University.

Some government institutions provide internal training for new staff. The Department of Translation and Interpretation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, runs a stringent in-house training programme with very good results. Other government departments have collaborated with the EU's Joint Interpreting and Conference Service (JICS) training facility, sending their staff to Brussels for training. Most of these programmes have focused on consecutive, reflecting its continuing importance in China, and involve a combination of intensive job-focused training and on-the-job supervision and guidance. In a welcome development, it was r

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