How Interpreters of Top Officials Work, or Interpretation Master Class by Experts of MFA Russia

How to understand the speaker’s thoughts, keep up with the speech tempo, cope with the speaker’s accent and not to become a “bandit” interpreter? Andrey Zavarukhin has held a three-day master class at CITS.

Perception, interpretation, presentation, self-control – this is the chain the CITS MA students followed, guided by Andrey Zavarukhin, Third Secretary of the Linguistic Support Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The classes, like most of the interpretation nowadays, were held online. Top-level interpretation requires the maximum transfer of meaning and content. The students honed the shadowing technique – they followed heavily-accented English speakers, practiced sight translation of MFA Russia publications, which implies the use of specific vocabulary, carried out simultaneous interpretation of top officials’ speeches both from Russian into English and vice versa.

In addition, the master class participants talked about how Vladimir Putin puzzles interpretations. 1-year and 2-year MA students interpreted “putinisms” – this term in news media refers to the president’s sharp words and phrases that have become quotations. “It’s like cutting a piglet: there is a lot of screeching, but little wool” – how to interpret this phrase adequately in a few seconds? This is a task that even experienced interpreters cannot always cope with. And here is an example. April of 2019. President of Russia Vladimir Putin meets with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. They are talking about the economic relations between the two countries; Vladimir Putin calls Swedish businesspersons friends, mentioning five-billion investments on their part. However, the interpreter replaces this definition with a more neutral one, saying “partners”. Vladimir Putin notices this and corrects the interpreter, “I said ‘friends’, and he interpreted ‘partners’. A bandit.”

Substituting words of a synonymous series is one thing, but if an inaccuracy is made in numbers, positions and names, it is a much more serious error. Andrey Zavarukhin gave recommendations on how to work with a lot of numerical information and personalities and gave a practical exercise. King of Thailand Maha Vajiralongkorn, Prime Minister of Libya’s Government of National Accord Fayez al-Sarraj, President of the Republic of China Tsai Ing-wen. You are just reading this now, while interpreters have to comprehend, memorize and reproduce it in the target language.

Andrey Zavarukhin analyzed common mistakes and gave advice to each student on how to work with topic-specific vocabulary, speed and presentation, saying that the most important thing is to practice as much as possible, because in this profession, you have to be ready for everything.