Relay interpreting is mainly used during conferences and meetings via a “relay” of interpreters using a subsidiary language.
Usually, an interpreter will translate into a more widely known language, such as English, before a second interpreter conveys the dialogue into the target language.
It is rare to find interpreters with very unusual language combinations such as Maltese and Spanish, Persian and Chinese, Swedish and Malaysian, etc.
In such cases or during conferences or meetings where many different languages are required, a direct interpretation from the source language into the target language is not always possible.
The source language is then interpreted using more than one interpreter via a relay solution.
