Being a United Nations interpreter has always struck me as a glamorous and relatively easy job for someone who knows two languages fluently. Then I read a short and fascinating article in this week’s New York Times Magazine that has me rethinking my assumptions. It actually sounds quite mind-boggling.

The interpreter quoted in the piece is the same one who took the reins from Gaddafi’s personal interpreter after he had a meltdown trying to translate Gaddafi’s hour-plus-long oration.

[Photo: Downing Street]