CITS Holds a Series of Events with DG SCIC Interpreters

On October 18-22, MA students and trainers of CITS took part in a series of events with representatives of the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission – interpreters of the Latvian, Lithuanian and Italian booths. DG SCIC experts assessed the level of students’ knowledge after their two months of studying in the master’s degree programme of CITS. In addition, foreign experts conducted master classes for students’ better proceeding to new subjects like note-taking consec and simultaneous interpretation.

The session held on October 18-19 was an aptitude test for the new cohort of CITS students. They were given two speeches to be interpreted without taking notes from Russian into English and from English into Russian. The experts also asked students some questions to check their background knowledge. Having passed the entrance test, the students had an online meeting with the DG SCIC interpreters, where the latter commented on their interpretation and gave advice on addressing the challenges encountered during the interpretation.

Then the first-year MA students attended a master class on introduction to consecutive interpretation with note-taking. The theoretical part of the lesson was conducted by Head of the Italian Unit of the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission Paolo Torrigiani, and the second part of the event was of a practical nature: students had the opportunity to see consec notes taken by interpreter of the Latvian booth Rita Nikolajeva and to practice interpretation of speeches and note-taking.