CITS MA Students are Sharpening their Interpretation Skills under the Guidance of UN Experts

Recently, the 2nd year MA students made acquaintance and had first classes with Sara Irene, an expert of the UN Interpretation Service in Vienna. In 2019, Sarah visited Astrakhan State University for the first time to give interpretation workshops for CITS MA students. During the visit, the UN expert met with the senior staff and teaching team of CITS, as well as with the rector of ASU Konstantin Markelov. Sara Irene was given a warm reception and she enjoyed working with our MA students. Thus, this year the UN expert was glad to accept the offer to work with our students online.

The first lesson with the second-year MA students took place in October. In the course of the classes, students did sight translation of challenging formal speeches from Russian into English.

Sarah gave very helpful advice on interpretation techniques and explained the specifics of translating UN texts. Aside from the classes, each MA student independently did exercises and tasks given by the expert, and then they got detailed comments and valuable guidance for work and honing of interpretation skills.

The second class with Sarah was held two weeks later and this time MA students were more confident in translating difficult texts. Now the work continues: MA students are engaged in self-study following Sara Irene’s recommendations and are looking forward to their next meeting.