Mock conference featuring Bruce Leimsidor

On May, 16 the first-year MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpretation and Translation held a mock conference devoted to the problems of immigration to the EU and Russia. The subject of the conference was not fortuitous since the invited guest was a professor of the Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Bruce Leimsidor specialising in all aspects of refugees and migration problems. Prof. Leimsidor talked about the immigration in Europe and, in particular, in Italy, where he is currently living. Afterwards, the journalists Olga Afanasyeva, representing the Russia Today, Olga Kulakova, The Moscow News correspondent, and Lidia Yaitskova, representing the Pravda, asked the guest a string of questions on the subject. One of the questions, for instance, was: “How to combat xenophobia? Which countries have managed to do that?” As it turned out, among all the European countries Germany is the only one to have an immigrant integration programme. A turcologist and an orientalist Liliya Petrova was the second speaker at the conference. She spoke about the immigrants in Russia. Then, both Liliya and Bruce discussed the issue of cross-impact of the German and the Turkish cultures. The last to take the floor was Maria Chuyan who was speaking on behalf of Pavel Durov, the founder of the Russian social network Vkontakte, and shared her opinion on whether people should emigrate from Russia. Mr. Leimsidor was glad to answer all the questions trying to give very detailed answers. He was very curious about the situation in Russia. The conference was fruitful and the interpreters had a great opportunity to practice their simultaneous interpreting skills. Prof. Leimsidor was rather satisfied with the quality of the interpretation provided by the students and commented on their grammar mistakes and also some inaccuracies in using terms as “migration”, “immigration” and “emigration”. Soon first- and second-year MA students will hold another mock conference which will be dedicated to the Syrian refugees problem. We expect Porf. Bruce Leimsidor, who has been already invited to take part in the following mock conference, to share his professional experience with the students.