On 30 September, the Translators’ Day, a salute of colored balloons soaring into the cloudless sky of Kazan marked the last day of Translation Forum Russia – the biggest professional conference in Russia bringing together language mediators from all over the country. A record number of people – around 500 – took part in the event.

As usual, the School was actively engaged in organizing and carrying out the Forum. Several days ahead of the Forum, an auto rally set off from Moscow with a message to promote language mediation in Russian cities. In Nizhni Novgorod, along the itinerary, a round table was held for students and trainers of the Nizhni Novgorod Linguistic University and the city’s language mediating community. The auto rally team was mainly composed of the leaders of major translation agencies. The School’s Deputy Director Angelique Antonova and its Honorary Vice President Noël Muylle represented the School.

During the Forum, the School led the round table on multilingualism, with Alexander Gorelik, the UN Information Center Director, and Noël Muylle, Honorary Director General of the European Commission as experts; Teimuraz Ramishvili, Head of the Linguistic Support Department, Russian MFA, participated actively in the discussion of language mediation issues. The School trainer Ekaterina Shutova moderated the round table on the issues of interpreter training. For the first time the Forum held a series of master classes on translation and interpretation from and into German by Irina Alexeeva. Also for the first time in the Forum’s history, the School trainer Thatcher Mines and Managing Director of the “Eclectic Translations” Agency William Hackett-Jones organized the work of the Freelance Workshop.

Among a multitude of topics, language mediation in sport attracted special attention, and the Sochi Organizing Committee members Andrey Moiseev and Elizaveta Sgibneva took time to answer all questions.

It is pointless to go through each and every issues discussed at the Forum in Kazan. One thing is clear though: the language mediation industry is rapidly taking shape, translators and interpreters do not hesitate to discuss challenges of improving the quality of their product and raising the social standing of the profession. We are glad that the St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation stands at the center of this important process.