CITS Establishes International Cooperation in the Field of Linguistic Inclusion and Sign Languages
On March 9, 2021, staff members of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation held a virtual meeting with Prof. Jemina Napier, an expert in sign language and intercultural communication at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland. Jemina is a professional translator, interpreter and researcher, an author and co-author of more than 150 publications, the head of various research projects in Australia, the UK and Europe, and the inaugural editor of the International Journal of Interpreter Education. She keeps being a member of the journal’s editorial board and of editorial and advisory boards of several other journals and book series. In addition, Jemina is a member of the Expert Committee on Accessibility for the World Federation of the Deaf, and she herself is proficient in and interprets from British Sign Language. Jemina is often invited to European conferences that discuss inclusive learning and sign language interpretation.Jemina was happy to meet with the CITS experts and supported the idea of their project on learning Russian Sign Language and training RSL interpreters in Astrakhan. Heriot-Watt University is one of the three leading European universities that develops their own training programme for professional sign language interpreters and carries out research in the field of non-verbal communication.
Jemina shared her experience and the experience of her European colleagues who had managed to introduce sign languages into university curricula and launch MA programmes in sign languages over the past few years. She also gave valuable recommendations to the CITS experts. She lamented that she’d often had to learn from her own mistakes while working, and therefore offered to share valuable materials for a more detailed consideration of the issue of training deaf and hearing sign language interpreters.
During the virtual meeting, the experts also outlined some areas of further cooperation between the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation and Heriot-Watt University.