News

Secondary School Children at SCIT

28 January 2020|

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 Trainer Diana Voronina holds a training session for language specialists in French Embassy in Kazakhstan

27 January 2020|

On 13-24 January 2020 SCIT trainer Diana Voronina held a series of master-classes in the Embassy of France in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan.  The language specialists employed by the Embassy had an intensive memory training, activated the background knowledge of France’s geography, history and culture. Another, no less important, outcome of the visit was the coming together of the Kazakh colleagues into a close interpreting community!

SCIT takes part in Global Dialogue Forum

24 January 2020|

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.

  

22 January: VC with Warsaw University

24 January 2020|

On 22 January SCIT held another virtual conference with Warsaw university, SCIT’s partner in the EMCI Consortium. The topic for the conference was How to be closer to nature in a big city. The students were offered three speeches in English, Polish and Russian, which were interpreted consecutively in several language pairs (EN-PL, EN-RU, PL-EN, RU-PL). Despite some technical hitches, the conference was a success, and the students received useful feedback from their colleagues and trainers. We hope for the continuation of the fruitful cooperation with our Polish colleagues.

Two hours with Daniel Gile

24 December 2019|

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!

  

 

4 December: SCIT holds a webinar on the Russian cuisine in English (under RAE auspices)

6 December 2019|

On 4 December Angelique Antonova, SCIT Deputy Director, and Professor Victor Kabakchi held another webinar under the auspices of the Russian Academy of Education. The webinar was devoted to the Russian Cuisine-Oriented English and required special attitude as the subject was delicious food. National cuisine is particularly important in the Russian Culture-Oriented English, as tourists are keen to taste local food.

The webinar available at: https://youtu.be/f9tOLS45Hd8

АНОНС Nov 2019

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

13 November 2019|

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.

7 October – 1 November 2019: master-classes of Dmitry Bloshenko

8 November 2019|

On 7 October – 1 November SCIT hosted Dmitry Bloshenko, ex-Senior Reviser of the Russian Translation Service, UNHQ in New-York, who gave master-classes in institutional translation.  Though many SCIT students are new to this subject and have no, or little, experience with these types of texts, intensive practice with a pro like Dmitry Bloshenko considerably improved their grasp of the matter and quality of translation. The students tackled the speeches delivered by the representatives of different countries at the UN meetings, and covered a lot of materials on economic and social issues. At the lessons there was room for creativity, and general discussions of the translation variants taught the students to carefully look for the needed word and be precise in rendering the subtleties of meaning. SCIT administration and students heartily thank Dmitry Bloshenko for sharing his vast knowledge and experience!

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

23 October 2019|

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.

14 October: VC with DG SCIC on Self-Training

16 October 2019|

On 14 October SCIT students had their first virtual class with the European Comission.

Dmitry Lupich, SCIT student, says:

Thank you for organising the virtual class with the European Commission. My colleagues and I found it extremely rewarding and insightful. With Carlos García Vico as our trainer during the session, we had a chance to share ideas about the self-training and self-evaluation aspects of our course in a productive, open and inspiring manner.

Our special thanks goes to Mr. García Vico for being so very kind and cooperative, and from whom we received good advice on how to approach self-training; we learned about several techniques that could facilitate that process. Even more importantly, Mr. García Vico inspired us to work harder and stay focused, however difficult sometimes things might seem to us at this early stage.

It seems to us, however, that this class would have been more effective and beneficial for us, had it been scheduled for an earlier date, maybe in September; it would have also been more productive if we had had more time for the practical part of the session.

All in all, the video conference was a great experience. We appreciate your efforts and the efforts of your colleagues from the European Commission in organising it, and we are looking forward to having more classes like this.