While the Pasha and the chief physician of his army, Clot Bey, resorted to the logical choice of recruiting graduates of al-Azhar since this formed the only pool of young literate men in the country, these men certainly had no knowledge of French or any other foreign language. At the same time, most of the doctors who were employed in teaching in the school had no knowledge of Arabic. To surmount this problem, a number of translators were assigned to each lecturer and asked to translate the lecture while it was being delivered.

XREF: Builds on the earlier highlight about simultaneous translation enabling early Egyptian medical education (loc 1086), here describing the actual mechanics of how that translation worked. Pays off: "Syphilis detection demanded weekly intrusive examinations of soldiers' bodies."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1124