The Six Official UN Languages and How UN Interpretation Works

If you have ever opened a UN meeting on Web TV and heard a delegate's real voice faintly underneath someone else's, you have already met the UN's language system. Six languages get live interpretation, everyone else gets a workaround, and the official written record turns up later. Here is how it actually works, and what to do if the language you work in is not one of the six.

The six official languages, and how the list grew

The UN has six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. They did not all arrive at once. According to the Dag Hammarskjöld Library's language timeline, resolution 2 (I) of 1 February 1946 made Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish official languages, with English and French also serving as working languages. Spanish, Russian and Chinese became working languages later, one body at a time, and Arabic was added in the 1970s.

Arabic became an official and working language of the General Assembly on 18 December 1973, through resolution 3190 (XXVIII). That is also the date the UN now marks as Arabic Language Day.

Official languages vs working languages

People mix these two up constantly. In the General Assembly (including its committees) and the Security Council, all six are both official and working languages, as the Assembly itself recalls in its 2024 resolution on multilingualism. The Economic and Social Council has all six as official languages but only English, French and Spanish as working languages. The Secretariat, the staff side of the house, works in English and French.

In practice, a lot of what surrounds a meeting exists only in English and French. The UN's meetings coverage press releases are posted in both, usually within two to three hours of a meeting ending. In the same 2024 resolution, the Assembly "regrets" that meetings coverage, daily press releases and Security Council press statements are still issued only in English and French.

How interpretation works in the room

The basic rule: a delegate may speak in any official language, and the speech is interpreted simultaneously into the other five. Each language has its own booth (you will hear people say "the English booth"), and according to DGACM, interpreters work into their main language. The exception is the Arabic and Chinese interpreters, who work both from and into their main language.

That exception is what makes relay work. If a delegate speaks Chinese and the Russian booth does not work from Chinese, those interpreters can work from the Chinese booth's English or French version instead. So some of what you hear has passed through two interpreters.

Speaking a language that is not one of the six is allowed. The delegation just has to provide either an interpretation or a written text of the statement in one of the official languages, as the official languages page explains.

Speed matters too. The Interpretation Service notes that once delivery goes above 120 words per minute, accurate and complete interpretation becomes "exceedingly challenging", and with strict time limits on statements, many speakers race. Honestly, in a packed open debate you can sometimes hear it: the interpretation comes out tighter than the speech.

What this means on UN Web TV

UN Web TV launched its new English site in 2021 and versions in the other five official languages in early 2023. Each video lists its audio tracks, and on a typical day the listings are a mix: many meetings with "Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish, Original", some with only "English, Original", and some with just "Original".

"Original" is the floor audio, meaning whatever language the speaker actually used. Everything else is interpretation. A few things follow from that:

• If an event was not interpreted, there is no channel to switch to.
• The language channels are live interpretation, not translation. Fast and useful, but not the record. UN Geneva's FAQ on meeting recordings puts it plainly: "Only the intervention in the original language constitutes an authentic record of the proceedings."
• Archives can lag. The Assembly has complained about "delays in the elimination of the disparity" between English and the other five languages in archived webcasts, so do not assume an older meeting has every channel.

There is more on finding and navigating meetings in our UN Web TV guide.

When the official documents arrive in all six

The UN says "most UN documents are issued in all six official languages", and the General Assembly keeps insisting that the rules on simultaneous distribution in all six be "strictly respected". Simultaneous means the language versions come out together. It does not mean they come out quickly.

For meetings, the record is a separate product. The Library's guide to meeting records explains that some bodies get verbatim records (symbol PV, a full first person account) and others get summary records (SR, a condensed third person version), never both, and that not every meeting gets a record.

A Security Council verbatim record carries this note on its first page: "This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the translation of speeches delivered in other languages." Every speech that was not in English is tagged "(spoke in French)", "(spoke in Chinese)" and so on. The first version is marked provisional, corrections go "to the original languages only", and the final text is printed in the Official Records.

So the written record is translated from what the delegate actually said, not transcribed from the interpreter. It is the version to quote, but it appears later than the video and the press release, so most people work from the audio in the meantime. For the Council specifically, see how Security Council meeting records work.

If you work in Turkish, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Hindi or Swahili

Here is the gap. None of those are official UN languages, so there is no interpretation channel for them in meetings and no official record in them either. UN News does publish in Portuguese, Kiswahili, Hindi and Urdu alongside the six, which helps with headlines, but a news story is not the meeting.

Realistically you can follow the English or French channel and translate in your head, wait for the record and translate that, or run a transcript through machine translation. The last is the fastest when you need to brief someone today. Some honest caveats:

• You may be translating a translation. An AI transcript of the English channel is a transcript of the interpreter. If the delegate spoke Arabic and the English came through relay, your Turkish text is three steps away from the speaker.
• Names and terms are where it breaks. Delegate names, country names, acronyms, resolution symbols, and UN phrasing where one verb changes the meaning. UNTERM, the UN's multilingual terminology database, is the place to check official terms and country names.
• The UN says so too. The 2024 multilingualism resolution asks for human oversight of translation tools, citing "the errors inherent to unedited machine translation".
• Check before you quote. Anything going into a cable, article or brief should be checked against the record once it is out.

Where Sumletter fits

Sumletter handles the machine translation step for UN Web TV meetings. You paste a webtv.un.org meeting URL, it downloads the video, transcribes it with AI speech recognition, and translates it into the six official languages plus Turkish and German. Those are the only two beyond the six for now, so if you work in Portuguese, Japanese, Hindi or Swahili, Sumletter won't close that gap yet. You also get an executive summary, a breakdown of each country's positions and key statements (Professional plan and up), and you can ask your own questions about the transcript. A typical meeting takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes.

Same caveats apply: these are AI translations, not official UN translations, and they can contain errors. Use them to understand a meeting fast, then cite the official record. The free trial covers one video in up to two languages, with no credit card, and paid plans start at $9.99 a month. You can start the free trial here.