From 28 November to 9 December 2011, the School’s students had an opportunity to attend master classes offered by Aidar Shayakhmetov, a Senior Reviser from the Russian Translation Section at UNOG.

Drawing on his many years of service in New York and Geneva, Aidar Shayakhmetov highlighted the practices developed over the years by translation units at various UN duty stations, spelled out the competencies that need to be acquired by UN staff at language posts and talked about employment opportunities in the context of succession planning, which is now at an advanced stage at the UN. He analysed with students their individual efforts to translate papers from English and Spanish into Russian, which had been eliminatory at recently conducted UN examinations, introduced them to different types of documents processed at the UN and shared with them his experience of working with UN terminology resources and other databases available online. Students’ skills of translation from Russian into English were also tested in class. Each workshop was accompanied by a Q & A session, which was an essential part of the learning process.

In his close contacts with the administrators and faculty, Aidar Shayakhmetov discussed in great detail the ways to fine-tune cooperation within the framework of arrangements existing between the University and the UN and sought to identify further possible steps to bring the curriculum in line with the requirements of the UN language services, building on the School’s accomplishments.