«Наша профессия – соединять людей»
It is the first time when national translation forum is held out of the Moscow region. According to Olga Egorova, the chairwoman of the organizing committee, the director of the Institute of Language of Astrakhan State University, the decision to chose Astrakhan as constructive communication forum for specialists in translation and interpretation is quite logical. The Astrakhan region is surrounded by Caspian countries, which is important from geopolitical point of view, and relationship with them can’t be established without skilled translators and interpreters. In order to solve this problem ASU carries out intensive training of the specialists of 16 European and East Asian languages, including “exotic” languages like Farsi, Arabic, Japanese, Dari, Pashto, Azerbaijani and Hebrew. ASU is moving forward to launch the programs on Tadjik, Uzbek and Turkmen languages, in other words ASU is working to cover all the languages of the Caspian region. Modern distance learning technologies will provide our university with an opportunity to become a center for highly professional training of interpreters and translators in Central Asia, countries of the Caspian Sea and the Black sea regions. Moreover, in September, 2011 ASU will start a new master program under a project called ‘the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation’, and then its graduates will be able to apply for a job in the EU interpreting services.
230 specialists from MSU School of Translation and Interpretation, Moscow International School of Translation and Interpreting, St. Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation at Herzen State Pedagogical University and from other universities participated or delivered lectures in the UTR Translation Summer School. The senior representatives from the Union of Translators of Russia as well as the executives of the top Russian translation companies also visited Astrakhan. Mary Hobson, a well-known English translator of Alexander Pushkin’s works, was a distinguished guest of the forum.
The 5th International Translation Summer School will be held from the 5th to the 12th of July. The program is rather intense and includes public session of the Presidium of the UTR Research and Instructional Board, the report of Marco Benedetti, the European Commission Director General of Interpretation “DG SCIC as an employer and facilitator of interpreters’ training”, training seminars on information and communication technologies application in interpreters’ training, master class ‘Romance and prose of translation’, case study “Electronic means of making educational publications and didactic textbooks”, roundtable discussion “Optional courses in university. The models of literary translation training”, a translation competition and so on. At these days young translators, interpreters and students will have a great opportunity to be taught by the top level international specialists in translation and interpretation.
The words of L.O. Gurevich, the UTR chairman, “Our profession is to unite people” suit as a motto of every day of the Translation Summer School work.