Jean Herbert was a French Orientalist and one of the first generation of interpreters for the United Nations organization. He was chief interpreter of the United Nations interpretation service in New York. Herbert was one of the pioneer veteran and model consecutive interpreters from the League of Nations and the International Labor Office. He worked between World War I and World War II for different international organizations. Towards 1930, he became interested in Buddhism and the Far East prompting him to travel to India, China and other Buddhist countries, leading to the authorship of many books related to the Far East such as his Introduction to Asia. In 1946 he founded the collection Spiritualités vivantes in the publishing house Éditions Albin Michel. He published his Manuel de l’interprete (The Interpreter’s Handbook) in 1952. He also founded and directed two collections of multilingual and technical dictionaries published by Elsevier and sponsored by the Universities of Paris, Heidelberg, Mainz, Trieste and Georgetown University. Herbert also became a vice-president—and then president—of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC) for three years. After retiring from the United Nations in 1954, Herbert continued freelancing and traveled to the Far East, Madagascar and the Middle East. He held the chair of Eastern Mythologies at the University of Geneva, where he taught from 1954 to 1964.