Traineeship at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, 2017
From February 27 to March 10 the 2nd year master students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation Karina Askhabova, Rufina Izmailova and Madina Kudabayeva undertook a traineeship at the Linguistic Support Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
During their stay the students learnt about the structure of the Department and its activities, and also practiced translation and interpretation. At the first stage the students translated documents of international organisations such as the UN and ASEAN, as well as improved their skills of working with software and hardware tools, electronic dictionaries and the Internet information assets. At this stage MA students were supervised by the professionals of the Translation Unit, who provided them with a detailed analysis of every completed task.
The second stage of the traineeship was focused on the development of consecutive and simultaneous interpreting skills. Oleg A. Krokhalev and Alexey S. Sadykov, high-level interpreters of the Russian MFA, directed the students’ work. Each class included practicing consecutive interpretation of texts on various topics – from politics and economy to the history of Moscow.
Moreover, the students had an opportunity to interpret simultaneously the briefing of Maria Zakharova, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, Second Class, the Director of the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (in the form of “a dummy booth”).
The traineeship allowed the students to find out what is hidden behind the walls of this impressive high-rise building of the Russian Ministry of foreign Affairs, to learn about the Department’s work, as well as about other services of Russian MFA, to test their own training level in practice and to experience the working atmosphere of translators and interpreters in diplomatic entities.
