SCIT – News

25 January 2018: SCIT hosts Yuri Lebedev, translator and member of St. Petersburg Branch of Union of Writers

29 January 2018|

On 25 January SCIT hosted Yuri Lebedev, translator and a member of the St. Petersburg Branch of Union of Writers. The meeting was dedicated to the 75^th anniversary of the Breach of the Leningrad Siege. At the meeting Yury Lebedev told the students about the German memoir literature and about the Leningrad Siege, dwelled on the Defense of Leningrad. The guest actively engaged the students in conversation and asked their opinion about many issues related to the war.

The participants discussed the tricks of the work of military interpreters and translators. Mr. Lebedev spoke about the difficulties of simultaneous interpreters’ work and recounted some events from his own experience. Talking about the subtleties of literary translation he said: “Nobody will ever become a good translator without the perfect knowledge of the mother tongue”.

Irina Alexeeva asked the guest to tell about his engagement in the work of the International Centre “Reconciliation” where he is a chair. The Centre established good connections between Russia and Germany which helped to open a military cemetery of German soldiers in Sologubovka, in the vicinity of St. Petersburg.

The writer also shared his impressions about working on the books Into Eternity and Jokes of Military Interpreter. An important milestone in his career became the translation of Arno Surminski’s novel Vaterland ohne Väter (Fatherland without Fathers).

After the talk the students asked many questions about the fates of military translators and discussed the dilemma of heroism and self-sacrifice of Leningrad citizens.

“There was heroism, but tragedy was also there”, – concluded Mr. Lebedev

http://mr7.ru/articles/175760/

Catherine Pollard, UN Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management sends greetings to Herzen University and SCIT

18 January 2018|

SCIT continues to receive greetings on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. Catherine Pollard, UN Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management, addressed a congratulatory letter to Rector Sergey Bogdanov.

11 January 2018: Master-classes of Andrey Falaleyev

15 January 2018|

The beginning of the semester is rich with events: on 11 of January SCIT hosted two master-classes of Andrey Falaleyev, a renowned simultaneous interpreter and an author of a series of training manuals for interpreters. The students were eager to hear the stories from the professional life of the experienced interpreter, and our guest generously shared the tricks of the profession with them. Andrey noted the high level of the students’ motivation and the good progress they made during the year.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov congratulates SCIT

12 January 2018|

The St. Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation starts to receive greetings on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. The first official letter arrived from Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

Interpreter/Translator Professional Standard takes shape

4 December 2017|

On 24-26 November public hearings concerning the development of the Interpreter/Translator professional standard took place under the auspices of UTR in Higher School of Economics, Moscow. A Ministry of Labour representative L. Khlusneva spoke about the Ministry’s requirements to this document. 32 experts took part in the discussions, among whom were representatives of translation companies, academia and freelance translators and interpreters. SCIT was represented by director Irina Alexeeva. Heated discussions brought about the general understanding of the standard’s ideology and wording.

6 December 2017: Webinar ‘Russian Culture Through English’ (only in Russian)

28 November 2017|

6 декабря 2017 г. в 17.00 состоится вебинар «Английский язык как ключ к русской культуре (Russian Culture through English)». Ведущие: доктор филологических наук, профессор В.В. Кабакчи и заместитель директора Санкт-Петербургской высшей школы перевода РГПУ, кандидат филологических наук, доцент А.М. Антонова.

Вебинар также является открытием конкурса «Молодые Набоковы», целью и задачами которого являются привлечение внимания молодежи к оригинальному творчеству на иностранном языке как средству описания родной культуры, поощрение и поддержка иноязычного словесного творчества и выявление литературных талантов среди молодежи.

Регистрация на вебинар открыта по ссылке:

https://events.webinar.ru/2047543/732717

17 November: SCIT takes part in VI St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum

17 November 2017|

SCIT has traditionally taken part in organizing a festival as part of the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum. We hope that this year’s festival, Russian Heteroglossia, enriched the Forum program with its round table discussion and a translation concert. The festival opened with the Living Word: Russian Heteroglossia round table discussion, where the issues of increasing translation from the national languages of the peoples of Russia, and the mediating role of the Russian language were brought to public attention. The round table was moderated by Sergey Filatov, a renowned political and cultural figure, member of the International Academy of Creative Endeavours, and President of the Socio-economic and Intellectual Programs Fund. Mr Filatov has paid a lot of attention recently to developing translation from the ethnic languages of Russia into Russian, and holds training seminars in Moscow. The participants discussed such issues as: Does translation play a part in preserving cultural heritage? What is to be done to help save indigenous languages? Do we need to translate literary masterpieces into Russia’s ethnic languages? What is the role of the Russian language in supporting Russia’s other languages?

Among the participants were such distinguished scholars as Nina. Zaitseva, who painstakingly collected the endangered Veps language in the book of the epic Virantanas. Yana Novikova from St. Petersburg State University spoke about the Izhor language, Farid Akhmadiev from Ufa posed the question of the future of the Bashkir language. SCIT director Irina Alexeeva reported on the Yakut Literature in Russian seminar she held in Yakutia.

The event continued with the translation concert, Amidst the Languages. This concert has become a tradition, and this time the ethnic languages of Russia became the focus of attention. Translators from Veps, Karelian, Bashkir, Yiddish, as well as from Slavic (Bulgarian, Czech, Polish) and Scandinavian (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch) presented their new work. The thematic variety was impressive: from the historic ship logbooks of Willem Barentsz, to the Swedish Academy of Magic Creatures.

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9 November: Introduction into Simultaneous Class

13 November 2017|

On 9 November a much looked forward to event took place at SCIT: the students did their first simultaneous interpretation. This is always a special event at SCIT: students and trainers get together, more experienced colleagues help the young ones to come through this important moment of professional development, and the SCIT teaching methods are developed to minimize the students’ possible fears and apprehensions about their performance in sim. They did it! Congratulations!

DGT Translating Europe Forum

13 November 2017|

The 4th edition of the Translating Europe Forum attracted to Brussels 500 professionals to discuss new skills, new markets and new profiles in the translation sector.

What skills are needed to thrive on today’s translation market? What does this mean for translator training and continuous professional development? How can public services and the private sector learn from each other? How can cooperation between academia and industry boost employability?

Commissioner Gunther Oettinger and DGT Director-General Rytis Martikonis opened the event with inspiring addresses on the importance of languages and translation as expression of diversity in Europe. SCIT Deputy Director Angelique Antonova attended the Forum and actively participated in the lively discussions.

UN Day at SCIT

24 October 2017|

The UN was officially founded on October 24, 1945, when the majority of signatories ratified the UN Charter. For SCIT the UN Day is not just a date in the calendar. SCIT and the UN have been long-time partners and the support of the Russian linguistic services played a key role in establishing a translation and interpreting school in St. Petersburg. Back in 2008 SCIT signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UN on cooperation in training language specialists. Since early days institutional translation and interpreting with focus on the UN documentation have become a permanent part of the SCIT training program. At present 20 SCIT graduates are employed as regular staff in the Russian linguistic units of the UN, and an even bigger number are listed in the roster and have worked on temporary contracts. In 2015 Herzen University was honoured to host the IV MoU Universities-UN Conference, and we are proud to have organized this event to the highest standards.

This year the UN Day at SCIT coincided with the visit of Dmitri Bloshenko, Senior Reviser in the RTS, UNHQ in New York. A series of intensive master-classes was conducted for three weeks of studies, and as early as in October the new intake of students had an opportunity to acquire a feel for the UN specifics. Supervised by Dmitri Bloshenko the students thoroughly ploughed through the texts on a wide range of topics. Besides, on UN Day Dmitri Bloshenko and Angelique Antonova, SCIT Deputy Director, were invited to give a lecture on Multiligualism and Linguistic Mediation at the UN at the Department of International Relations in North-West Institute of Management – a branch of Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.