News

Meeting at UN

On 29 May the UN Department for General Assembly and Conference Management hosted the Herzen University delegation.  Catherine Pollard, Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management, and Movses Abelian, Assistant to Under-Secretary General, were happy to welcome in the UN Headquarters Yulia Komarova, Vice-Rector for International Cooperation, Irina Alexeeva, SCIT Director, and Angelique Antonova, SCIT Deputy Director. The participants of the meeting discussed the cooperation under the Memorandum of Understanding between our institutions, stressing the imporatnce of virtual classes, master-classes of practicing interpreters and internships. The Herzen University and SCIT leaders thanked the UN DGACM for their efforts to promote cooperation, and Ms. Pollard and Mr. Abelian congratulated SCIT on the new achievements of SCIt graduates in the UN Language Competitive Examinations.

22-26 April 2019: Master-classes of Ian Newton

On 22-26 April SCIT hosted Ian Newton, former ILO Chief-Interpreter and trainer from FTI, Geneva University. With the Dual Degree Agreement still in operation between our schools, Mr. Newton was invited to give a series of master-classes in retour for the SCIT students. The guest lecturer was able to give the students necessary guidance and shared professional tips in interpreting into English, which are invaluable in the final lap of the academic year. The students appreciated the expertise, but also the engaging personality of Mr. Newton. Looking forward to new meetings with Ian!

DG SCIC Conference in Brussels

On 4 and 5 of April 2019 the traditional conference on the recent trends in interpreting and interpreter training was organized by the Directorate General for Interpreting, European Commission, in Brussels. Among the speakers were Florika Fink-Hoojer, Director General DG Interpretation, Javier Hernándes Saseta, Head of Multilingualism and Knowledge Development Unit, Filip Majcen, Director of Interpretation Services Management and Professional Support, and others. DG SCIC’s team also presented its Knowledge Centre on Interpretation, 2.0 and attracted a lot of attention. Universities’ representatives spoke about the issues of Artificial Intelligence, machine translation and technologies, and how they transform the learning and working environment for interpreters. SCIT was represented by Deputy Director Angelique Antonova.

SCIT takes part in EMCI General Assembly Meeting in Brussels

On 4 April the EMCI General Assembly meeting took place in Brussels. SCIT was represented by Deputy Director Angelique Antonova. The participants discussed the preparations for the student meeting in Prague which is to take place on 24-28 April. The meeting will be attended by four SCIT students.   Also much attention was given to the implementation of the European Commission grant projects in quality assurance control and developing resources and speech repositories for graduates about to take language examinations for IOs. SCIT is an active participant of these projects.

SCIT opens doors to potential students

On 21 February SCIT opened its door to potential applicants. Director Irina Alexeeva welcomed the guests and explained the selection procedure at SCIT aptitude tests.  She underlined that the selection process is rigorous, and successful applicants should prepare themselves for a year of hard work. “When we launched SCIT in 2008, said Irina Alexeeva, we were primarily concerned about raising the status of a translator or an interpreter in our country. Our second goal was  to turn out top-notch specialists for  international organizations able to maintain the high quality of work across the world”.

Deputy Director Angelique Antonova descibed the job prospects after graduation. She backed up her speech with illustrative statistics: out of 129 SCIT graduates 21 are UN staff interpreters and translators, 18 have worked for the MFA of Russia, around 30 are employed by the UN or its agencies on temporary contracts. A lot of graduates work successfully in business or free lance.

One of SCIT’s present day students shared his impressions: «Just a year ago I was sitting in your place and thought that getting into SCIT was impossible. But everything is in your hands. Just like us, you can succeed in the exams, if you are intent on learning and mastering the profession. I certainly advise you to try it. I won’t be easy, but you can do it, like we did. ».

SCIT trainers Tatiana Maruschenko, Yuri Shashkov and Sergey Afonin took the questions from the auadience.