Master Сlass on Conference Interpreting by Staff UN Interpreter

On October 21-28, MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation were honing their interpreting skills under the careful guidance of Nikolai Telnov, staff interpreter of the Russian booth at the UN Office in Vienna. The 7-day course took place at the Center for Conference Interpretation, new facilities of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation. From morning till night the MA students worked to get valuable skills and performed various exercises.
Nikolai Telnov delivered a lecture on basic principles of conference interpretation for the first-year students. They also had an opportunity to turn new knowledge into action while practicing with second-year students in the booths. The UN expert used speeches given by world leaders at various sessions of the UN General Assemblies. Some of them, including the statements by authorities from the USA, Vietnam, Kazakhstan and other nations, were considered in detail.
As the program included some UN documents the students were asked to learn a long list of terms and clichés required to work with these specific texts.
Nikolai Telnov gave constructive feedback on each student’s work, advised on political speeches interpreting and provided recommendations on the ways to improve their skills. He also dwelt on the peculiarities and challenges that interpreters may encounter while working at the UN.