I am retired, but most of my life I worked as a translator and interpreter. I had been working as a translator for a few years when the company I worked for realized it needed interpreters about once a month. Myself and a few colleagues, with the help of the company, trained ourselves to work as interpreters when we were needed, otherwise we worked as translators. I enjoyed it very much although at times it was very difficult (especially when the subject was too technical - for instance, interpreting presentations by revenue officials on complex aspects of the Income Tax Act) and always it was stressful (you were the one who was supposed to know how to say it in the other language, but like everyone else, you sometimes had memory blanks). At times people were very difficult to understand. Nowadays, most companies do not offer any training. Those were very different times.