The School Director Irina Alexeeva spent four days, from 28 February to 3 March, in the State Pedagogical University of Tomsk with a series of lectures on the theory and practice of teaching interpreting and translation. She held several master classes in interpreting and translation. The School is planning to extend the range of short-term programs of skills upgrading for interpreters and translators.
Contribution of St Petersburg scholars to the theory of translation
A monograph of Tadeusz Szczerbowski “Russian Theories of Literary Translation” has
been published in Poland. It is a broad retrospective which embraces the works of renowned
scholars from A. Potebnya and A. Fedorov to Yu. Lotman and E. Etkind. Contemporary
academics are represented by M. Gasparov and T. Kazakova. The book devotes a separate
chapter to Irina Alexeeva, Herzen professor and Director of St Petersburg School of Conference
Interpreting and Translation, and her theory of translatology.
Отмечен вклад петербургских ученых в науку о переводе
В Польше опубликована монография Тадеуша Щербовского «Российские теори>и
литературного перевода». Широкая ретроспектива охватывает труды ученых от
А.Потебни и А.Федорова до Ю.Лотмана и Е.Эткинда. Среди современных ученых
Петербурга отмечен вклад М.Гаспарова и Т.Казаковой. Отдельная глава книги посвящена
профессору Герценовского университета, директору Санкт-Петербургской высшей школы
перевода И.С.Алексеевой и ее теории транслатологии текста (см.илл.)
On March 5, there was a Welcome Day in the St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation. Anyone interested in interpreting and translation had a chance to talk to the School graduates and students, administration and trainers. The gathering grew into a serious discussion of the practicalities of interpretation training in general and issues of training interpreters and translators for international organizations in particular.
St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation holds a Welcome Day on 1 March at 5 p.m. The event is to be attended by Mr. Sergey Goncharov, First Vice-Rector, Herzen University, Irina Alexeeva, Director of St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation, a renown teacher of interpreting and translation, translator and author of several books on interpreter training; other interpreters and trainers. The students and graduates of the School will also take part.
Venue: 3a Kazanskaya str., St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation, Herzen University (Building 18, floor 7). Tel: +7 (812) 570-08-94
Traditionally December is a month when the School hosts Russian MFA interpreters. Oleg Krokhalev, retired MFA chief advisor, interpreter working at the highest level, gave master classes in simultaneous interpretation to the students from December 13 to December 18, 2011. The classes of Oleg Krohalev came as a powerful final chord in a semester of hard work. His expertise, energy and composure combined with vast diplomatic culture impressed the students – a good example to follow.
From 28 November to 9 December 2011, the School’s students had an opportunity to attend master classes offered by Aidar Shayakhmetov, a Senior Reviser from the Russian Translation Section at UNOG.
Drawing on his many years of service in New York and Geneva, Aidar Shayakhmetov highlighted the practices developed over the years by translation units at various UN duty stations, spelled out the competencies that need to be acquired by UN staff at language posts and talked about employment opportunities in the context of succession planning, which is now at an advanced stage at the UN. He analysed with students their individual efforts to translate papers from English and Spanish into Russian, which had been eliminatory at recently conducted UN examinations, introduced them to different types of documents processed at the UN and shared with them his experience of working with UN terminology resources and other databases available online. Students’ skills of translation from Russian into English were also tested in class. Each workshop was accompanied by a Q & A session, which was an essential part of the learning process.
In his close contacts with the administrators and faculty, Aidar Shayakhmetov discussed in great detail the ways to fine-tune cooperation within the framework of arrangements existing between the University and the UN and sought to identify further possible steps to bring the curriculum in line with the requirements of the UN language services, building on the School’s accomplishments.
Three weeks, from 21 November to 10 December, saw the first attempt to establish cooperation between the St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation and the Linguistic Services of the European Parliament. The purpose of the visit for the EP interpreters Ilga Berzina and Natalia Malyhina was to polish the command of the Russian language, which greatly surprised everybody at the school since both guests were native Russian speakers. However, speaking the language as a professional interpreter differs from casual chat, and our guests learned a lot from attending master-classes in interpretation by the school trainers and the visiting UN translator Aidar Shayakhmetov. In our turn, we engaged our guests in the school activities and the students appreciated their professionalism and vast background. No less enthusiastically the students participated in multilingual mock-conferences organized by Ilga and Natalia. We sincerely hope that our cooperation with the European Parliament will be dynamic and fruitful moving forward.
German is the second in significance language of the European Union and second in use on the interpretation market in St Petersburg. These issues were discussed at the meeting with the colleagues from the Slavic Department and the Department of Cultural Studies and Translation of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz / Germersheim, Germany. Next year this university is planning to publish a collection of articles about modern discourses in translation theory by Russian scholars in German. Irina Alexeeva gave a lecture „Horizons of literary translation“ and made a report „Rückkehr in die Fremde“ about interpreter training methods in bilingual groups.
On 31 October the School trainers and students welcomed Mikhail Zagot, a well-known interpreter and MSLU lecturer. Now our trainees know him not only as an author of the famous song about interpreters, but also as a self-critical and versatile professional of translation. Mikhail Zagot started his carrier as a translator of literature. He did translations of Fitzgerald and Vonnegut and was a member of the Union of Writers in the USSR. He did a lot of translation for the cinema. Quality has always been of prime importance for him. We found in Mikhail a common string: several of the school’s trainers are trying their hand at different kinds of translation, too. Our guest was bombarded with questions, and one of the memorable answers went like this: “Why do I teach? Just because the experience reaches a critical point when one is eager to share it”. We hope that our trainees will benefit from this sharing, too. That day Mikhail Zagot presented his translation of a new book about Sherlock Holmes “The Silk House” by Anthony Gorovitz. The St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation extends its congratulations on this remarkable achievement!
Русский