Working as a simultaneous interpreter English–Italian at the highest institutional and media level is always a demanding task. Doing it for RAI, the Italian state television broadcaster, during the lighting of the Olympic flame and the Opening Ceremony of the Milano–Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, takes that responsibility to an entirely different dimension.
During these ceremonies, broadcast live nationwide and worldwide, my role was to provide real-time simultaneous interpretation from English into Italian whenever international guests, IOC representatives, or foreign speakers addressed the audience. This ensured that millions of Italian viewers following the event on television could fully understand every message, speech, and symbolic moment.
👉 You can watch the ceremony and listen to my simultaneous interpretation at selected moments here:
https://www.raiplay.it/video/2026/02/LIS—Cerimonia-di-Apertura-delle-Olimpiadi-Invernali-Milano-Cortina-2026—06022026-2ff23e90-5229-4e34-b5a5-fdb76eac9f5a.html
Interpreting Live on Global Television: Managing Pressure and Responsibility
Even after many years of professional experience as a conference interpreter, working live in mondovisione — with millions of viewers listening — generates a very specific kind of stress.
The awareness that:
- your voice is being broadcast in real time,
- there is no possibility to correct or rewind,
- any mistake could be instantly noticed, commented on, or criticized by journalists and social media users,
creates a level of psychological pressure that is hard to replicate in any other professional setting.
This pressure does not disappear with experience, but experience teaches you how to manage it. Over time, you learn to accept the responsibility, trust your training, and focus exclusively on the message you are conveying — not on the audience size, not on the potential consequences of an error. Concentration, breathing, and mental discipline become essential tools, just as important as linguistic competence.
Preparation Is the Real Key to Quality Simultaneous Interpreting
As in all high-level interpreting assignments, the real work starts long before the live broadcast.
For an event of this magnitude, preparation includes:
- Watching previous Olympic opening ceremonies to understand structure, rhythm, and typical institutional language
- Requesting and studying the indicative running order of the ceremony
- Identifying which speeches are scheduled and which are likely to be improvised
Of course, when working live, not everything can be predicted. Some interventions happen unexpectedly, and flexibility is part of the job. However, for the speeches that are planned, preparation can be extremely detailed.
Studying Speakers: Vocabulary, Patterns, and Linguistic Habits
For programmed speakers, I systematically listen to past speeches available online. When the number of official speeches is very large — as in the case of the President of the Italian National Olympic Committee — a different strategy is required.
In preparation for the interventions of CONI President Giovanni Malagò, I focused on:
- recent interviews,
- public addresses from the months preceding the ceremony,
- recurring themes and expressions.
This approach is based on a simple but crucial linguistic principle:
every individual tends to use a relatively stable and finite set of vocabulary items.
- Speakers with a more basic linguistic register will rely on a smaller, more repetitive vocabulary.
- Highly educated or rhetorically skilled speakers typically have a broader lexicon, but they still show clear patterns and preferred expressions.
Recognizing these patterns allows the interpreter to anticipate terminology, tone, and rhetorical structure — a decisive advantage in simultaneous interpreting.
Choosing the Right Word: From “Legacy” to “Retaggio”
During preparation, I systematically note down recurring keywords and decide in advance on the most accurate and context-appropriate Italian equivalents.
A concrete example from the Milano–Cortina 2026 Opening Ceremony is the word “legacy”.
I chose to render it as “retaggio” in Italian — a term that conveys institutional continuity, long-term impact, and cultural inheritance.
These are not necessarily words we use every day in spontaneous conversation. However, smart and targeted preparation ensures that, when the moment comes, the right word is immediately available — without hesitation, without compromise.
Building on this point, there is an important professional consequence that often surprises people outside the interpreting world.
Because the right word must be immediately available — without hesitation, without compromise — I do not accept this kind of assignment when it is proposed at the very last minute.
Some time ago, for example, a private television broadcaster contacted me asking if I could provide live simultaneous interpretation of the televised debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Most likely, they had found themselves unexpectedly without their usual interpreter and were looking for a quick replacement. Despite the prestige and visibility of such an event, I declined.
Refusing was not a matter of availability or confidence — it was a matter of professional responsibility.
Live political debates at that level are linguistically dense, rhetorically aggressive, and packed with references, slogans, recurring expressions, and speaker-specific vocabulary. Without proper preparation, the risk of making serious errors becomes extremely high. And when those errors happen in mondovisione, they are not just minor slips: they can distort meaning, misrepresent positions.
There is also a second, very concrete reason to say no: career risk. A grave mistake made live, in front of millions of viewers, can permanently damage an interpreter’s professional reputation. Years of experience, credibility, and trust built with broadcasters and institutions can be compromised in a single evening.
For this reason, knowing when to refuse an assignment is as important as knowing when to accept one. Preparation is not optional in high-stakes simultaneous interpreting — it is the condition that makes quality, accuracy, and professional integrity possible.
Conclusion: The Invisible Work Behind a Global Broadcast
Simultaneous interpreting for the Olympic Games is a perfect example of how preparation, experience, and mental resilience converge in real time.
What viewers hear is a fluent, natural voice.
What they don’t see is:
- hours of research,
- careful terminology selection,
- deep familiarity with speakers and institutions,
- and the ability to manage intense pressure while remaining fully focused.
Being part of the Milano–Cortina 2026 Olympic ceremonies as a simultaneous interpreter for RAI was both a professional challenge and an extraordinary honor — a reminder that, even when millions are listening, the key to excellence remains the same: preparation, preparation, preparation.
Hi, I’m Giorgia Milani — yes, I was the English–Italian simultaneous interpreter for the Olympic Games.
If you’re looking for an experienced conference interpreter for high-level events, feel free to get in touch. You can reach me on WhatsApp at +39 388 321 3517 or by email at interpretingservices@misterpolyglot.com.
I work on-site in Northern Italy and Switzerland, and remotely worldwide. I am generally not available for long work-related travel — not because I don’t like airports, but because I’m fortunate enough to be busy where I am. That said, exceptional projects are always worth a conversation.
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