Conference interpretation is interpreting in a conference environment. Conference interpretation may be simultaneous or consecutive although the advent of multi-lingual meetings has seen a massive drop in the use of consecutive over the last 20 years.

Conference interpretation is roughly but not exactly split into two types of market: the institutional market and the private market. International institutions (EU, UN, EPO, etc), holding multilingual meetings, often favor interpreting from a number of foreign languages into the interpreters’ mother tongue. Local private markets tend to hold bilingual meetings (the local language plus one other) and the interpreters work both into and out of their mother tongue. The markets are by no means mutually exclusive.