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.

Please DO NOT “rattle off”… 35 pages of text at breakneck speed: your audience will not remember any of it, especially as in such a case you might as well send these pages to each participant. What's more, your interpreters are not robots capable of working without pause...

First present the MAIN TOPICS in a short, precise and explicit manner.

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!

Titles:	4-6 words; font size 30 points
Text:	25 words, 5 lines; font size 24 points
Font:	Calibri, Arial, Avenir
Letters:	lower case letters are easier to read than UPPER CASE
Animation:	only to highlight a subject

After reading the last line of a projection, wait at least 3 SECONDS before moving on to the next one. This time is needed for the interpreters to convey what you have just said and for the audience to follow you.

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!