CITS Master’s Students Celebrate the European Day of Languages

The first month of the academic year is coming to an end, and studies at the CITS are gaining momentum! On September 25, on the eve of the European Day of Languages, CITS 1st and 2nd-year master’s students, having taken their places in the booths and at the table, with their headphones on and pens in hands, were mentally carried away to one of the conference halls of the European Commission. Mock conference format is already familiar to the students, but this time the speakers and chairpersons were new for them – they were expert interpreters working at the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission. 2nd-year students faced a challenging task of performing simultaneous interpretation of a two-hour meeting on the topic “Multilingualism”, during which several speakers spoke in 7 European languages.

An important feature of yesterday’s conference was the “relay” (a kind of a cascade of interpretations): for example, a speaker who spoke in Portuguese was interpreted into English by a simultaneous interpreter present at the conference, and his speech was interpreted by CITS students. In addition, the working languages were not only English and Russian, familiar ones to the students, but also French and German, which did not become an obstacle for future interpreters.

“In fact, today was the first serious experience with relay interpreting. I can’t say that it was easy; sometimes it was even harder than just interpreting a speaker’s speech, especially when you do a relay of a trainee interpreter. In any case, it is a very important experience, because this is how the work at the meetings goes: non-stop speeches, relays and not always familiar topics”, comments Natella Usacheva, a 2nd-year student. 1st-year MA students took part of observers and also shared their impressions: “Today’s conference allowed us to immerse into the realities of the future profession. To see how interpreters of international level work is an invaluable experience for students and fledgling interpreters”, Olga Odnobokova says.

The European Day of Languages, celebrated since 2001, is designed to encourage the study and acquisition of foreign languages, and such conferences are a small but important step in this direction. As for CITS MA students, it is an excellent opportunity for them to prove themselves.