How to use the UN Digital Recordings Portal and Audacity for interpreting practice

If you’re an interpreter adding a new language or exploring a new subject, speech repositories can be real gold mines.

Dedicated training banks such as the European Commission’s Speech Repository include speeches selected or created specifically for interpreting practice. The Commission also brings together additional resources in its Interpretation Training Toolbox. Speeches are generally recorded by interpreter trainers, interpreters (AmeriVox, IBPG, PIPS, Repris, TIP and WISE), or students (e.g., Speechpool. [Its website is being overhauled. Stay tuned!]).

But what if you’re looking for thousands of hours of authentic, high-level speeches — together with the interpretation delivered in the booth and, increasingly, synchronized transcripts? Look no further than theUN Digital Recordings Portal, a treasure trove for serious interpreting practice.

The UN Digital Recordings Portal

When interpreters search for speeches delivered at the United Nations, they often start with UN Web TV. That platform is excellent for watching live and on-demand meetings and now offers dedicated services across all six official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

For audio-focused interpreting practice, however, the UN Digital Recordings Portal is especially useful. It includes recordings from thousands of public meetings at the United Nations. New recordings are typically made available soon after meetings end, with the original-language channel and the interpretation channels that were provided for that meeting.

You can search recordings by date and keyword, select the relevant language channel, and jump to specific meeting segments. The portal’s redesigned interface also makes it easier to work across languages.

One major improvement since this article was first written is the addition of automatic, word-aligned transcripts for many UN Geneva recordings. These transcripts are available in the six official UN languages and can help you confirm names, numbers, terminology, and difficult passages after you practice.

Note: The transcripts are generated automatically and are not official records. The original spoken intervention remains authoritative, so use the transcript as a study aid rather than an infallible reference.

Here’s an example. Search for a recent session of the Human Rights Council. Want to practice Arabic? Find an Arabic-speaking intervention, then open or download the original-language recording if that option is available. You can then switch to another language channel to listen to the professional interpretation.

We recommend lining up several short speeches before you start practicing so you can focus on interpreting rather than searching between attempts. And if you’re new to UN material, begin with speeches whose topic and structure are reasonably familiar before moving on to denser debates.

Simple tech for recording and listening

Now it’s time to set up the tech. We still recommend Audacity, a free, open-source multi-track audio editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Import the speech into Audacity, select your microphone and headphones, create a new recording track, and start interpreting. Use Audacity’s track controls to adjust the level and stereo position of the source and your recording.

Once you’ve finished interpreting the speech, stop the recording and take a breather. Congratulations — you’ve made it through a UN speech! 👏

Next, mute the original track and listen to your own recording. Focus first on the big picture: Did you preserve the speaker’s message, structure, register, and logic? Then go back to the passages that felt difficult.

Listening to your interpretation and the source at the same time is also easy. Pan one track to the left ear and the other to the right, then press play. You can pause, rewind, or loop a tricky passage while taking notes.

It can be useful to review in stages: first the original, then your interpretation, then both simultaneously. For especially difficult passages, temporarily slowing playback while preserving pitch can help you analyze the source — but always work back toward the original speed for realistic practice.Learn from the pros

Bonus: for meetings where interpretation was provided, the Digital Recordings Portal lets you listen to the professional interpretation in the relevant language channels.

Before comparing yourself directly with the professionals, start by listening to their work on its own. Try to identify the strategies they use and jot down useful expressions, terminology, and turns of phrase.

Once you’ve started to build an understanding of UN jargon, listen to the original speech and the professional interpretation together, again panning one recording to each ear. This makes it easier to hear how the interpreter handles compression, reformulation, difficult syntax, numbers, and institutional terminology.

And finally, compare your own rendition with the professional version. You can put your recording in one ear and the booth interpretation in the other, or review them one after another. The goal is not to find one “correct” rendition, but to identify useful alternatives and better strategies.

Remember that the professional interpretation is not an answer key. Simultaneous interpretation is produced under real-time constraints, and only the original intervention is authoritative. Use the booth version as a model to learn from, not as proof that every choice is the only possible one.

The new automatic transcript adds a fourth layer to this workflow. If you missed a number, name, or phrase, check the transcript after listening. Then return to the audio to verify it. That gives you a richer deliberate-practice loop: source audio → your interpretation → professional interpretation → transcript → targeted review.

Practice makes perfect

The speed and caliber of UN speeches can seem overwhelming at first. Don’t be too hard on yourself! Remember that staff interpreters have been working for years and often receive the texts in advance.

Josh used the approach we’ve described here to train for the UN’s accreditation exam - and didn’t pass the first time around. 😊 But he kept practicing and eventually gained a solid enough grasp of UN speeches to pass the Language Competitive Examination.  

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to the Digital Recordings Portal and find a speech you’d like to practice. As you do so, listen critically to your work, learn from the pros, and keep improving every day.

First published in April 2021. Revised in August 2026.

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