interpreti

The fence every language learner needs. Traduki is written translation: you sit with a text and produce another text. Interpreti is the spoken kind: somebody talks and you turn it into another language while they are still talking. English blurs this in casual speech and then gets caught out at conferences; Esperanto keeps the two verbs apart, and so do the professions. A tradukisto works from paper. An interpretisto works from a booth with headphones on.

The second sense is the older one. Interpreti also means to construe: to say what something means, without any second language involved. Kiel vi interpretas lian silenton? asks how you read his silence. A court interpretas a law, a critic interpretas a poem, and an actor or a pianist interpretas a role or a piece, which is where the English noun interpretation of a performance comes from. Both senses run through the same Latin idea of standing between two parties and making one intelligible to the other.

Around it. Interpreto is an interpretation as a result, interpretado the activity of interpreting, interpretisto the professional. Klarigi is to explain, which is what you do when the difficulty is the listener rather than the text; signifi is what the words themselves do.