The International Union of Architects (UIA) is a global federation of national architect associations from over 124 countries and territories. The non-governmental organisation, which represents almost 1.3 million architects worldwide, has called on Calliope several times to organise teams of interpreters for its annual Congresses and General Assemblies. These events are key occasions for architects, engineers, designers, technologists, planners, thinkers and writers from all over the world to gather for a week of lively and engaging talks, workshops and events.
Given the important international dimension of the Congress and General Assembly, interpretation has a key role to play in ensuring the success of the event as well as the many meetings that take place in parallel. To date, Calliope has vetted, composed and managed highly skilled interpreter teams for UIA events in Barcelona (1996), Beijing (1999), Istanbul (2005), Tokyo (2011) and Seoul (2017), covering a total of seven languages. Calliope members have met the challenges of each event, including the complex language requirements of the 2005 edition, earning the UIA’s complete trust.
“Ms. Gree, at the Tokyo conference, teamed up with Congress Corporation to provide simultaneous interpretation of 4 languages (English, French, Spanish and Russian) and organized the team of 15 interpreters necessary to cover the whole programme including the plenary, Assembly and a number of break-out sessions, with her team’s work resulting in a total of 72 interpreter/days between September 25 and October 1, 2011.
Ms. Gree’s very professional attitude and enthusiasm toward the success of the project served to boost the morale within our team, and her quick response was a great help in moving the project steadily forward despite the time difference between Tokyo and Barcelona, where she is based. She also has a wide network of quality interpreters throughout the world and has won their full trust as chief interpreter.”
Ms. N. Takeuchi, Congress Corporation
