So if you think about it, you have to do one of two things: you either have to be so good that even if you lose 30 percent say of your ability under stress you're still good enough, or you have to fight the stress, which means that you can perform closer to your best ability all the time. And something I always try and train my students to do, who are young interpreters doing their master's degrees, is not necessarily to get better on their best day, but to find a way to be consistently closer to their best so their performance is not going up and down, up and down, but it's remaining more or less constant, as of course has to happen with professionals, because failing, drying up in the booth, or running out of the booth screaming is not an option when you're a professional interpreter.

Advice for conference interpreters who are struggling in the booth: how to switch into ‘degraded mode’ to ensure ‘basic minimum’ performance.