News

SCIT Graduates 2020 Get EMCI Certificates

On 6 March SCIT welcomed its graduates 2020 on the remarkable occasion: they received the long-awaited EMCI certificates. As is known, EMCI is a privileged consortium of 16 European universities offering Conference Interpreting programs with the recognized quality of education. Among its members are such renown schools as ESIT, ISIT, FTI (UNIGE), Charles University in Prague, Comillas University in Madrid, and others. SCIT is the only university in Russia which was granted this honour.  The member universities jointly monitor the quality of training, and guarantee that member universities follow the stringent quality criteria.  This is the reason why getting an EMCI certificate for a university graduate is nearly a seal of excellence, a proof of their high professionalism.

Some graduates 2020 were unable to attend the ceremony due to various reasons, and one of them is being actively engaged professionally. It is this cohort 2019-2020 that was impacted most of all by the lack of live interaction with each other and trainers in spring and summer 2020, and that is why every opportunity to come together counts as a special occasion. SCIT trainers and administration were happy to join them and share in the joy of the meeting. The new cohort were also present, and used this opportunity to ask questions, listen to the graduates’ stories of studying at SCIT, taking exams and entering the professional life.

SCIT takes part in DG SCIC’s virtual event ‘SCIC Meets Universitites On-line’

On 3 and 4 December 2020 DG SCIC held a special on-line event SCIC meets Universities online.  This year’s theme for discussions was interpreting in the times of a pandemic. Thought-provoking presentations and interesting discussions focused on such topical issues as interpreting practices, interpreteer training and interpreter selection in the times of a pandemic. Carlos Alegria, Director General DG SCIC (acting) opened the event with a welcomiing address, and Javier Hernández Saseta, DG SCIC, Head of Unit Multilingualism and Knowledge
development,  stressed the importance of the topic for the professional community in his word of welcome. SCIT was represented by Deputy Director Angelique Antonova.

International Translation Day at SCIT

International Translation Day celebrated on 30 September was marked at SCIT by a series of interesting events.  On the day SCIT held the first in this academic year virtual conference with EC SCIC. The conference was devoted to self-training and lasted 3 hours. The expert from the EC SCIC side was Carlos Garcia,  who has vast experience in interpreting and acted as a trainer in a similar conference last year, too. He explained how to plan the self-training session, work with a study buddy, how to set targets for the self-training and check on the progress. The students found the lesson very useful and were genuinely grateful to Carlos for the tips.

On 1 October SCIT graduates 2020 were awarded their diplomas. Antiepidemic measures had their impact on the usual diploma award procedure, and this year the awarding ceremony and the traditional boat trip took place later than usual.  However, the diploma award ceremony was attended by Andrey Maksimov, Head of the Committee for Science and Higher Education, Government of St. Petersburg, and Yulia Komarova, Vice -Rector for International Cooperation, Herzen University, who both warmly welcomed the graduates. Together with diplomas the graduates received SCIT certificates and books as gifts.

Another meeting of the open seminar Terra Translatologica also took place on 1 October.  This time the participants discussed the work of translation agencies in the times of crisis. The main speakers were Yulia Shestovskikh, a staff translator at the Vosstania, 6 Translation Agency and a SCIT trainer, and Fiodor Kondratovich, director of the LingvaKontakt Translation Bureau.  Elena Tarasova also joined the discussion.

The present-year SCIT students, however, were busy participating in their first mock conference. This is an important milestone for them as they and the trainers draw conclusions on their first month at SCIT – what they learned, how well they can prepare and deliver speeches, how effectively they work with their partners.  Of course, they were excited. But everything worked well for them, each one of them got his or her share of praise and critique. From now on mock conferences will be a weekly event. Let us wish them success!

SCIT’s participation in EMCI General Assambley

On 11 September Angelique Antonova, SCIT Deputy Director, took part in the work of EMCI General Assambley which convened virtually.   Representatives of member-universities discussed many and various issues: the ways chosen by each university to adapt the educational process to the distant format, the range of resources employed on the way, the steps to be taken to meet the challenges the future may hold in store. The colleagues were unanimous that the pandemic changed the profile of the T&I profession, and practicing translators and interpreters had to test the new software in the emergency mode, and many solutions are only to be discovered and tried.   Such tectonic shifts couldn’t but affect the training process at T&I schools. In the past academic year SCIT made active use of the KUDO and GoReact software, and thanks to that the training process in consecutive and simultaneous interpreting did not stop for a day. In the current year SCIT managed to select enough students to run the program as well as to engage in the training those who objectively cannot attend the classes in person as yet.  SCIT is optimistic about the future and hopes to uphold its reputation regardless of the challenges of the day.

SCIT’s final mock conference for the Russian MFA

SCIT traditionally finishes the academic year with an extracurriculum mock-conference organized especially for the Linguistic Support Department of the Russian MFA. This year the conference was held on-line. We decided to show the graduates at work with the languages that are most in demand in the MFA (they are English, German, French and Spanish).  The confrence was devoted to migration in today’s world. The speeches touched upon various aspects of the problem: the laws prohibiting to help illegal migrants in Switzerland, the influence of migratory processes on Russia’s economy, migration to the European Union, and even the Swiss enclave in Brazil. The speeches lasted 6 to 8 minutes, and  were interpreted consecutively in different language pairs; then there was a Q&A session, also interpreted consecutively. As a rule, questions and answers are the most difficult part of the conference. The MFA colleagues tried to find a weak spot, and brought in  the names of mushrooms and spices, difficult idioms, long quotations from the UN Secretary General, and even poetry. The graduates wouldn’t yeild, and showed good skills and potential for growth.

We are thankful to the colleagues from the Rssiam MFA who took part in the conference, asked questions and evaluated the graduates: Andrey Kleimenov, head of the section at the Linguistic Support Department, Victor Abramov, and  Daria Mandrova, SCIT graduate and currently a staff interpreter at the Russian MFA. We are certainly very grateful to all SCIT trainers who put time and effort in preparing and holding the conference.