The team is made up of 14 full-time simultaneous interpreters employed by the government to provide interpretation services in different settings, including meetings held by district councils, government boards and committees, and press conferences and seminars. Six of them are deployed to Legco meetings on a rotational basis.

Approached for an interview, the interpreters politely declined to be singled out by name, saying their role is not to have a registered presence but only a voice - a voice the content of which is somebody else's.

But they were able to share insights into the mental challenges and adrenaline rush they experience as they try to convert the language of lawmakers and officials into another tongue on the fly as accurately as possible.

They emphasise the multi-tasking required of them in their work - listening, comprehending, analysing the underlying meaning, and translating, all within seconds.

With the city's legislators known for their penchant to resort to drama and witty one-liners amid the verbal sparring, the interpretation team admit to having struggled to snuff out their own laughter on occasion as quips and jokes are traded across the floor or when lawmakers engage in unexpected antics.

Most of the members of the team have more than two decades' experience under their belt. All had to meet the minimum requirement of having seven years of experience since qualifying to apply for the job.

They have lasted that long in the service due to their "strong passion for languages and a keen interest in current affairs", they told the in a group statement.

"One never has a dull day being exposed to a diverse spectrum of subject matter being discussed and debated," says one interpreter, who would only give her name as Jackie. She has also been on the job for over 20 years.

"We do feel privileged to have first-hand experience of interpreting what is happening at different Legco meetings."

But the work can take its toll, especially at high-profile meetings where audiences often hang on every word being spoken.

The controversial Legco vote in June on the government's proposal for electoral reform was one such occasion. Listeners wanted to know clearly where each legislator stood on the issue, and to cope with the pace of the debate, a lot of preparatory work was required on the part of the team so they could avoid being caught on the wrong foot.

They usually start a day by carrying out research on burning issues to stay on top of the cut-and-thrust of legislators' exchanges. Scouring the newspapers, both English and Chinese, every morning and tuning in to television and radio broadcasts take up a large chunk of their time.

"We study them in depth and compile glossaries of specialised vocabulary from them until we gain a good grasp of the issues that will be discussed," says Keith, another veteran interpreter who only gave his first name.

"Being well prepared is of pivotal importance to a simultaneous interpreter," he says. "With listening, analysing, and speaking going on at the same time, a simultaneous interpreter needs all the mental processing capacity one can get. A good understanding of the subject matter will ensure the accuracy of our output."

Even though they have no guidelines for their work to rely on, they say they observe the norms and practices of the International Association of Conference Interpreters.

According to the association's guidelines, good interpreting is a form of acting that requires the translator to communicate the speaker's intended messages as "accurately, faithfully, and completely" as possible.

As a speaker's alter ego, the primary loyalty of an interpreter is to the speaker and his or her "communicative intent", whatever the speaker's position or point of view, the guide says.

"The interpreter is morally responsible for the integrity of his or her work and must not bow to any pressure in performing it. The interpreter must never change or add to the message.

"Furthermore, the interpreter must never betray any personal reaction to the speech, be it scepticism, disagreement or just boredom," the guide states.

Hence, even when speakers come across as nonsensical or offensive, or contradict widely held beliefs, interpreters still need to stay true to the speaker's message and remain impartial.

"As the alter ego of the speaker, a simultaneous interpreter upholds the impartiality of the conduit role of conveying fully the messages the speaker intends to get across and staying faithful to the discourses that come through our headphones."

However, in a chamber made up of members with vastly different backgrounds and styles, Jackie and Keith admit that staying true to the messages put forward can pose a test that is unique to each member of the chamber.

They are grateful when members send them prepared texts in advance to help avoid scenarios the interpreters say can turn a normal day into a nightmare, including when legislators crack unusual or unexpected jokes, when they wax poetic about a subject, when they deliver number-heavy speeches at speed quoting complex statistics, or when they use garbled and long-winded sentences.

Jackie still remembers how her heart sank when a speaker tried to crack a joke using the metaphor of a mahjong game.

"I was thinking that it was going to go down like a lead balloon," she says.

"To follow the joke, one must have at least a smattering of knowledge of the different suits of mahjong tiles, like the bamboo suit and the circle suit … One would not understand the punchline of the joke unless one understood what constituted a winning hand."

For interpreters, a joke is often no laughing matter. "If you have to explain a joke, it is not funny," Jackie says. "Jokes are notoriously difficult, especially when they come with details which are culture-bound and culture-specific like mahjong games."

Heart-stopping moments also come in the form of speakers who pepper speeches with verses or quotes from ancient sources, such as , or who feel compelled to break into song.

"Simultaneous interpreters are not poets or singers - these [situations] do give us an adrenaline rush," Keith says. "We know we can never within split seconds reproduce the quotes in their full splendour, but we still have to try desperately to convey the underlying meaning into the target language in order to do what justice we can to the original."

Fast speakers tend to trip them up, especially when they pack their speeches with data.

"As the time limit approaches, they tend to ramp up their speed to twice as fast to finish their speeches on time," says Keith.

Then there are the speakers whose "sentences stretch out almost endlessly, making it so hard for us to pin down the subject of the sentence", he says.

"Waiting is not an option in simultaneous interpretation, so one has to get started with the interpretation and make sense of what the speaker is trying to say as he goes along."

Claudia Mo Man-ching, of the Civic Party, who is fond of delivering speeches in English, says the government needs to spend more on training interpreters.

Legco interpreters generally perform well but on some occasions fail to deliver accurately, she says. "On June 17 when we debated the political reform vote, I used two terms in my English speech - 'a maggoty apple' and 'apparatchik'," she says. "Maybe these two terms sounded difficult to them - the interpreter lost track of that part of my speech."

She also says the delivery of interpreters tends to be flat and mechanical, failing to reproduce meanings with flair.

"They tend to use very simple words to interpret expressions with complex meanings. This will affect their accuracy. More training will certainly help improve the quality of their work."

Interpreting using a tonal language like Cantonese also adds to the pitfalls, but also produces some moments of amusement.

Keith recalls how once he had to struggle hard to control his laughter over an outburst by an expatriate speaker who chose to speak in Cantonese.

"In the heat of the moment, he had a little slip of the tongue that evoked a roar of laughter," he says. "He turned the Cantonese words for 'stance' into something sounding like Chinese sausages."

Radical lawmaker "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung, who likes to sprinkle his speeches with excerpts from classical poems, ancient quotes and Cantonese slang and puns, says he never checks if the interpreters have faithfully interpreted his words.

"I agree that some Cantonese terms and phrases are very difficult for interpreters, especially some ancient quotes and classical Chinese poems," he says.

"I'll remind myself to give them an advance copy of my speech if the situation allows. Nowadays, people tend to speak in colloquial language in Legco, and I agree that lawmakers should be more helpful in assisting them."

Hong Kong lawmakers use foul language, sing and wax lyrical

The Legislative Council may seem like nothing but a big talking shop at times. But the city's lawmakers can sometimes grab the headlines for all the wrong reasons, posing a challenge to interpreters trying to make sense of their verbal antics. These are some infamous examples:

In April 2009, while criticising Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah's proposed economic relief measures as meagre, Raymond Wong Yuk-man, at the time a member of the League of Social Democrats, branded Tsang in Putonghua, meaning "shouldn't be" and "poor guy" in English. Both terms are a near homophone for the vulgar Cantonese expression , meaning "drop dead".

On 16 October last year during a debate on the Occupy movement, Tommy Cheung Yu-yan of the Liberal Party stunned the public by singing the whole Cantonese version of the song in support of the city's police in handling the clashes. The Cantonese lyrics became: "We must fight, at front line I am enlisted. Steadfast we hold; bright future we will meet. With no regrets, I'm a police!" His stunt drew jeers from critics.

"Long Hair" Leung Kwok-hung also has a penchant for singing in Legco, especially improvised songs. On 25 April 2012, he chanted in Putonghua: "There is no Leung Chun-ying without the Communist Party; and there is no [Executive Council member] Fanny Law [Fan Chiu-fun] without Leung Chun-ying!"

On 25 April 2012, Leung quoted his favourite classical Chinese verses mixed with his improvised poetry: "While meat is left rotten in the kitchens of the rich, thousands of people are freezing to death in the streets. What the chief executive spent for one night in a hotel can feed an elderly person for three years."

On 10 May 2012, pro-establishment unionist Wong Kwok-hing recited Cantonese doggerel to mock filibustering by radicals from the League of Social Democrats and People Power: "I filibuster, you pay the cheque; I put up a show, you pay the money; I play this game, you foot the bill; I want to steal the show, you die with me … People Power plays on the people; The pan-democrats aid and abet; The people have to pay for their fun; And they can do nothing about it; People, people, what can they do? And I am left with sighs and laments."