In September 2013, Herzen University signed a Grant Agreement with the Intergovernmental Foundation for Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation to undertake a training program for interpreters-to-be from the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the St Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation. This program follows on from the pilot project successfully carried out in 2012. The cooperation between the MFA of Kazakhstan and Herzen University is in accordance with the IFESCCO mission, which is is to contribute to the further development of humanitarian cooperation and intercultural communication within the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russian is the principal language of intergovernmental and international communication in the CIS, as well as being the language of instruction and communication at the School, making this grant possible. Mastering the ins and outs of interpreting from English, German, French and Chinese into Russian will help our Kazakh colleagues to provide professional interpretation in dealing with their country’s international partners, and will equip them with the methodology and techniques to interpret from and into their national language – Kazakh.

This is a project of important international standing: for the first time CIS students can receive a one year-long comprehensive professional training in interpreting with Russian. It is of paramount importance that foreign interpreters with Russian should improve their skills in-country, becoming experts and disseminators of the Russian language and culture worldwide. We sincerely hope that other CIS countries will also be interested in this project, as highly qualified interpreting staff will undoubtedly contribute to strengthening their positions in the international arena