News

Secondary School Children at SCIT

27 January was a remarkable day for SCIT. The school children from St. Petersburg’s secondary school  №574 came to visit the School .  The children were accompanied by their class master Grigoriy Gavrilov, teacher of Russian and Literature.  Director Irina Alexeeva held a master-class in interpretation for them. She focused on the memory training exercises and speech cohesion exercisers, and used for them the materials connected with the date of 27 January – Memorial  Day of Leningrad Siege Break,  International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthday. The crowning exercises tested the children’s erudition and knowledge of Russian. Also irina Alexeeva told the guests about SCIT and Herzen University’s trainig program for scholl children “ABC of Translation”.

SCIT takes part in Global Dialogue Forum

Moscow, hosted by RUDN University. The Forum program was intensive and various (https://ic4ci.com/ru/programme-main). The organizers also offered a wide program of master-classes on the margins, where SCIT also participated. The SCIT training on introduction into consecutive interpreting was very popular with the participants: Angelique Antonova, SCIT deputy director, held a highly successful class incorporating memory exercises and sample practice speeches. Director Irina Alexeeva and Angelique Antonova took part the main program as well. The key-note speakers of the plenary session Interpreter of the Future: UPGRADE discussed the changes that took place in the industry over the last year and the ways to meet these challenges. Thus, Irina Alexeeva stressed the necessity for the interpreter to be versatile and able to quickly learn the skills demanded by the market as well as meet the high professional standards set by international organizations. Vladimir Kuznetsov, Director of UN Information Centre in Moscow, and Alexey Fedorov, Deputy Director of MFA Linguistic Support Department, confirmed that quality translation is indispensable in building bridges between peoples on the international arena. An interesting discussion took place in the section How to train interpreters for the international career, where SCIT showcased its scenario method in teaching institutional interpretation. Other participants, such as Marklen Konurbaev, COSINES Pi founding father, Ekaterina Pokholkova, Dean of Translation Department at MSLU, and Julia Poger, professional interpreter, AIIC member and author of Know Your Worth training course, also took part in the discussions.

Two hours with Daniel Gile

On 18 October SCIT and the TranslAcademy project jointly organized a webinar with a renowned theoretician and interpreter trainer Daniel Gile, professor at ESIT, Paris. The webinar was attended by hundreds of people, some in person and by far more by distant connection. The webinar format was extended: two moderators, Irina Alexeeva and Angelique Antonova, coordinated the work on the SCIT side, and the third moderator and sponsor, Alexander Bondarenko, represented the translation company ‘Translatel’ from Kropivnitskiy, Ukrain. The interpretation was provided by Ksenia Persova and Andrey Krupennikov, SCIT graduates. This time they worked on the site, from the booths in the School, and not remotely as usual. Daniel Gile’s erudition, his ability to explain difficult things so that everyone understood, and eagerness to answer the most unexpected questions were highly appreciated by the audience. Mr. Gile’s theoretical scope covers the theory of deverbalization and the functional theory of translation, but in his view many theoretical aspects are not explored yet. The famous theoretician showed his awareness of the most up-to-date issues in the theory and practice of translation and interpreting.

We are looking forward to welcoming Daniel Gile at SCIT!

7 and 8 November 2019: SCIC takes part in DGT EC Annual Conference

On 7 and 8 October Directorate General of Translation of the European Comission held the annual conference Translation All Around Us. SCIT took an active part in the conference, with Deputy DirectorAngelique Antonova attending all plenaries and forum sessions and holding important meetings on the margins. Will Hackett-Jones, SCIT translation trainer, gave the presentation on future-proofing the translation career with subtitling.

18 October 2019: Trilateral VC with the European Parliament and UNOV

On 18 October SCIT students took part in the trilateral virtual conference with the Europen Parliament and UN office in Vienna. The foreign partners provided speeches to be interpreted consecutively and assessed the students’ performance. The topics ranged from the studies into the effects of coffee on health to cigarette packaging, the level of speeches was set as beginner’s. Yet, it was a challenging experience.

To quote Dmitri Lupich, SCIT student:

That was a truly rewarding experience for us, as we were able to test our skills in conditions close to real life, with insightful comments provided by experienced interpreters from the European Parliament and the United Nations. The feedback we received was worthwhile and helpful to track our performance and progress.

It is noteworthy, however, that the complexity of the speeches seemed rather high for the stage we are at, and their duration exceeded the time limit of 6 minutes provided in the script, making the task quite challenging for us. It is our shared view that we would have performed better if we had had more time to master note-taking techniques by the time of the conference. Nevertheless, we showed results we are satisfied with, and we are happy to have had this experience.

We thank all participants of the conference and look forward to another one.