Foxes, Nuclear Energy and Cultivation of Roses: Virtual Class with the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission

It has been a really busy September for CITS students and trainers! The online format helps to attract our students to participate in a variety of virtual events and allows trainers to organize new educational formats. On September 28 another experiment was performed – it was for the first time that CITS and our partners from the Moscow State Linguistic University held a six-hour video class with experts from the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission. During this class we practiced not only consecutive interpreting, “traditional” for this type of classes, but also simultaneous interpreting.

This time, Rita Nikolajeva, an interpreter of the Latvian booth of the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission, acted as an expert from Brussels. Our students already know her thanks to an online workshop that she gave at the end of May. Together with their Moscow colleagues, CITS second-year MA students honed their skills of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation on speeches of various topics, from the population of foxes in urban environment and the impact of global warming on winemaking to nuclear energy and world demographic trends. The interpretation was delivered in Russian, English, French and German. First-year MA students acted as observers and gained valuable experience that will be useful to them in the upcoming aptitude test.

Tatiana Arzamasova shared her impressions of this interpreting experience: “Thanks to such events, I am once again convinced that the interpreter must know everything about everything. It is a wonderful experience that will help us improve our professional skills. “