Master Class with Sonja Swenson-Khalchenia

Since December 23, first and second year master’s students have been studying at the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation with the invited guest Sonja Swenson-Khalchenia, a freelance interpreter with solid hands-on experience. The CITS expert worked with various international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States, and the U.S. Department of State. Moreover, Sonja was directly involved in the implementation of some UN projects. She studied at various universities training conference interpreters in the United States of America, France, Mexico, Portugal and Belarus.

During the master class, Sonja was both a teacher and a student. In the first half of the class, Sonja taught MA students, offering them the most interesting material from foreign sources, analyzing controversial translation issues with them, giving recommendations and sharing techniques for memorizing large volumes of text. In addition, during group sessions, MA students were also able to teach the expert a lot. Sonja has a good command of Russian, but she would love to add it to her language combination and work with it professionally. Therefore, she took advantage of an invitation from CITS and came to improve her Russian language skills as well. She took an active part in working with master’s students, consulted with them and listened carefully to the explanations and feedback.

It is safe to say that training was fruitful for all participants. We thank Sonja for the visit and wish her success in her career and in all her endeavors!