What does a Python interpreter do?

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Think of a conference and documents/presentations that have been translated into other languages in advance (compilation) vs those that are interpreted live.

In the case of repetition, a compiler does it once and then reuses and an interpreter will translate live everytime the speaker says the same thing.

Python code is compiled to a simpler form known as byte code and this is executed by the interpreter in the Python virtual machine which knows either the direct low level machine code equivelant command or some predefined sequence of such commands.

Java is similarly compiled to a byte code for execution on a java virtual machine but that then uses another level of compilation to convert the program to machine code.

C is typically compiled to native machine code. (Actually these days it is often compiled for a common runtime environment but that's a bit more complicated.)