Interpreter must be ready for whatever comes!

On October, 14 the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation held the first (in this academic year) virtual class with the Directorate-General for Interpretation and Conferences of the European Parliament. Both the first-year and the second-year MA students participated in the class. It wasn’t the first VC for the second-year Master students, but for the first-year Master students the class marked the beginning of a long-awaited cooperation with our European colleagues. Madina Kudabaeva made consecutive interpretation of a speech about hepatitis C from German into Russian. Polina Sheluchina and Rufina Izmailova interpreted the speech on ageing population and birth rate, and Rufina Izmailova and Polina Karabalaeva interpreted the second English speech about the possibility (and rationality!) of total eradication of mosquitoes. The speaker from our side was a trainer of the Caspian School of Interpreting and Translation Nataliya Tutarinova. She shared some facts about the “Chinese economic miracle”, and Karina Askhabova interpreted the speech into English.
The students got both praise and criticism. The EP interpreters commend the students’ timing, confident delivery of the main points of the message, but reproached them for mistakes and inaccuracy in expressing ideas in Russian, as well as for omissions and wrong prioritizing in interpretation.
An EP interpreter Natalija Malychina and her colleagues analyzed in detail the interpretation of each student, giving helpful tips and pieces of advice. In particular, the MA students were advised to work on shorthand writing and structural links, i.e. rendering the logic of the speech.
This time we faced an unexpected situation as well: one of the speakers changed topics of the speeches, and the students interpreted the speeches on unprepared topics. Nevertheless they succeeded! The experts from both sides shared one view that it is a typical professional situation, and, as a trainer of our School Uliana Savelieva noted correctly, “interpreter must be ready for whatever comes: everything always can go not as it was planned, but we must pull ourselves up, get ourselves together and interpret”.