Grant Support for Inclusive Projects: CITS Holds International Roundtable

On November 30, the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation organized an international roundtable Grant Support for Inclusive Projects: Experience, Challenges and Opportunities.

The roundtable was timed to the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, approved by the UN. Its aim was to bring together various exerts and share experience in the field of grant support for inclusive projects, in particular for those projects related to the development and promotion of Russian Sign Language (RSL). Colleagues from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pyatigorsk, Novosibirsk, Murmansk, Minsk and Sumgait attended the roundtable.

Linguistic inclusion experts presented their reports and spoke about the projects that won grant support and their experience of working on these projects. The speakers shared their achievements, spoke about challenges they face during project development and implementation and plans for the future work in this area.

 The discussion involved:

• Olga Varinova, a top-class RSL interpreter (7th qualification level), the President of Siberian Russian Sign Language Interpreters Association, the Head of the Russian Sign Language Laboratory at Novosibirsk State Technical University;
• Elena Aleksandrova, a member of the Union of Translators of Russia’s Board, the Head of the UTR Murmansk regional branch, a member of the FIT-IFT Audiovisual Translation Standing Committee, Doctor of Science in Philology;
• Ivan Borchshevsky, a digital accessibility specialist, audiovisual interpreter, audio descriptor, a member of the Russian Union of Writers, Audio Descriptive Association, UK, and the Audio Description Worldwide Consortium, the Head of the RuFilms Digital Accessibility Department, Moscow, a lecturer at the Department of Practice and Theory of Translation at the Institute of Translation Studies, Russian Studies and Multilingualism, Pyatigorsk State University;
• Uliana Saveleva, a member of the Russian Translators Union, the CITS Director, translator, interpreter, professor, Candidate of Science of Philology, Associate Professor at the Department of English Philology, Linguodidactics and Translation, Astrakhan Tatishchev State University.

During the concluding panel discussion, the participants asked their questions of interest, received recommendations for project development and discussed prospects for collaboration.

We thank our colleagues for participation and look forward to further cooperation!