General Information
Allow us to remind you of a few basic guidelines for successful public speeking. They will help you keep to your allotted time and get your message across to your audience.
| DURATION: |
In order to keep to the schedule, we ask that you keep to your allotted speaking time and avoid gaps between speeches.
At the same time, please do not «rattle off» 35 pages at record speed. Your audience wouldn't get much of it. After all, you could just as easily have sent them the text to read in the comfort of their own homes and your interpreters are NOT Olympic sprinters! |
| CONTENTS: |
The speech should be comprehensible to ALL LISTENERS. |
| STRUCTURE: |
The speech should be structured in a simple and logical fashion.
Begin with short, precise, expressive KEY IDEAS.
Provide ARGUMENTS for these ideas, and make them clear. Restrict yourself to the 3 most important arguments for each key idea. |
| VISUAL AIDS: |
Will help your audience understand and remember your message. Visual aids alone, however, DO NOT MAKE A LECTURE and should not detract the audience from listening to the speaker. Remember, too, that for multilingual events you should prepare your transparencies in AT LEAST two languages, which can then be displayed simultaneously during the presentation.
Rule: 1 TRANSPARENCY OR IMAGE EVERY 1 1/2 MINUTES
Try to restrict yourself to one single idea per transparency, i.e. don't cram your pages full of text that must then be read aloud!
| Title: |
4-6 words; font size 36 |
| Text: |
about 25 words, maximum 5 lines; font size 24 |
| Font: |
Helvetica or Arial |
| Letters: |
lower case letters are easier to read than UPPER CASE |
| PowerPoint Animation: |
use only to make message clearer |
Short texts are easier to read (even from a certain distance), can be summarized better by the speaker, and will hold the audience's attention. Once you have read the last line of a slide, please wait AT LEAST 3 SECONDS before proceeding to the next slide. This pause is necessary to permit full interpretation of your text.
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| PROJECTION: |
POWERPOINT presentations, graphics and pictures are the most appropriate visual aids for a large audience. |
| SIMULTANEOUS INTERPRETATION: |
To guarantee accurate interpretation of your speech, please deliver your text at a leisurely pace and keep ± to the material you have given to the interpreters.
Should speakers be introducing one another (or should this be done by the conference convener before each new speaker), please provide the interpreters with brief biographies in writing: names of universities, degrees, professional titles and career stages can only be properly conveyed if the interpreters have them ON PAPER before them.
If you are planning on using ABBREVIATIONS, please consider that you may understand them, but that this is not necessarily the case for your audience, nor for your interpreters. Please therefore provide the interpreters with a list of abbreviations, and pronounce each one completely AT LEAST ONCE for your audience. |
GOOD LUCK!