Does the UK not have any native English speaking Mandarin interpreters?

http://www.languagescientific.com/translation-services/multilingual-interpreting-services/interpreting-services-types.html

Modes of Interpreting

The two major modes of interpreting are Simultaneous and Consecutive.

Simultaneous Interpreting

Typically, while performing Simultaneous Interpreting, the interpreter sits in a booth wearing a pair of headphones and speaks into a microphone. Strictly speaking, "simultaneous" is a misnomer: the interpreter cannot start interpreting until he or she understands the general meaning of the sentence. Depending for example, on how far apart in the sentence to be interpreted the subject and the verb are located, the interpreter may not be able to utter even a single word until he or she has heard the entire sentence!

This fact should make it evident how difficult the task of the interpreter really is: she must translate the sentence into the target language while simultaneously listening to and comprehending the next sentence. You can experience the difficulty of the task even if you only speak one language: try paraphrasing someone's speech with a half-sentence delay while making sure you understand the next sentence and paraphrasing the previous one.

One of the key skills of the simultaneous interpreter is decisiveness: there is simply no time to weigh the merits of variant translations, or to recall just the right idiom in the target language. Any delay and a few words (and possibly a complete thought) that the speaker uttered could be lost, and since the speaker may be far away, or even in a different room than the interpreter, the loss may be permanent.

Consecutive Interpreting

During Consecutive Interpreting the speaker stops every 1–5 minutes (usually at the end of every "paragraph" or complete thought) and the interpreter then steps in to render what was said into the target language. A key skill involved in consecutive interpreting is note-taking, since few people can memorize a full paragraph in one hearing without loss of detail. Interpreter's notes are very different from those of, say, a stenographer, because writing down words in the source language makes the interpreter's job harder when he has to translate the speech into the target language.
Many professional interpreters develop their own "ideogramic" symbology, which allows them to take down not the words, but the thoughts of the speaker in a sort of language-independent form. Then the interpreter's output is more idiomatic and less source-language bound.

Mark Sanderson wrote:

Is this a reflection of the lack of native English speakers who can successfully interpret from Mandarin Chinese?

Rita Pang wrote:

Chances are, once you go through an agency, rates they offer put people off.

The same thing has happened here in Canada - I have yet to hear of any incident of the lack of professional Chinese/English interpreters (specifically, Mandarin-speaking) here in Canada for major political events such as having heads of state visit, but for one I can tell you that in my province of residence (Ontario) last I heard there are only TWO certified Mandarin-English court interpreters, which has resulted in the lag in the hearing of many court cases. I am not at all surprised; the government, while not lacking a budget, or at least will be very much willing to pay fair rates, have outsourced this work to shitty local agencies who are paying $25 CAD an hour for court interpretation. I have been approached by various agencies constantly for interpretation work and no one has been able to accept my (very) low rate of 40 CAD per hour. As much as I'd be interested to work in that industry - why would I break my back for 25 bucks an hour?

'nuff said



[Edited at 2014-06-23 23:43 GMT]