Child Labour Exploitation in the 21st Century: CITS Holds a Virtual Class with Leading T & I Schools of Russia

On April 4, a truly historic event took place at CITS. The very first conference was held between three leading schools of translation and interpretation of Russia – the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation (CITS), St. Petersburg School of Conference Interpreting and Translation (SCIT) and Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU). The schools held an online meeting to exchange experience and best practices. The main task was to provide MA students with the opportunity to have more practice in interpreting and get useful feedback from trainers of the leading T & I schools of Russia.

CITS took the initiative to organize and hold the virtual class; the school held a number of kick-off meetings with representatives of SCIT and MSLU and determined the topic of speeches, levels of difficulty and candidates from among the students who were to interpret at the virtual class and receive feedback from trainers of the three T & I schools.

The subject of the conference was the exploitation of child labour. Russell Duffin, Head of the English Translation Service of the International Labor Organization (Geneva, Switzerland), who was an invited expert, accepted the invitation to deliver a speech in English and commended the interpretation of his speech by the students.

This format of cooperation allowed the interpretation students to try their hand at consecutive interpreting at a close-to-real-life conference and receive invaluable experience and feedback from representatives of the partner schools.