TONGUE TWISTING AT GENEVA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 13, 15 July 1939, Page 21

TONGUE TWISTING AT GENEVA

HTHE Assembly Hall of the League of Nations at Geneva has a unique arrangement for permitting a large audience to listen to a speech and simultaneously to hear through its microphone system translations in a maximum of eight languages, writes Demaree Bess in the "Christian Science' Monitor.". It is thus possible to do away with the cumbersome translations which slow up the meetings of the League Council. | Before each seat in the Assembly Hall is an arrangement of knobs and a head 'phone. Putting on the head 'phone, the spectator adjusts his knob to the language which he wishes to hear. Interpreters sitting in booths built along the sides of the hall speak into microphones as the speaker proceeds. The Internatonal Labour Conferences interpret speeches into four languages: German, Spanish, French, and English. But the League Assembly thus far has used only two. French and English. The system has thus not been used to the fullest possible extent. The League Assembly also has speeches translated afterwards, in spite of the microphone system, because some of the high officials in the secretariat believed that it would not be dignified to omit subsequent translations, even though all the audience has already heard speeches interpreted i through head 'phones. The microphone system also was omitted from the smaller chamber of the League Council, because the League secretariat decided that it would be undignified to interpret simultaneously the speeches of the dignitaries on the Council. For the sake of dignity, busy foreign Ministers have to sit through hours of boresome interpretations. But there is no instance on record of any protest. The Assembly Hall's miTophone system is believed to be *he only one <vf its'kind which is permanently installed. Similar arrangements have 'freen rigged up for special occasions. tc works extremely well, and would be even more impressive if it were used f,o the full extent for which it has % ten prepared.