MFA Russia Interpretation: CITS Students Attend Autumn Series of Master Classes by Interpreters Working with Russia’s Top Public Officials

On November 11-16, MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation took part in the master classes held by interpreters of the Linguistic Support Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Anastasia Kazakova, the Third Secretary of the Linguistic Support Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, opened the series of virtual classes. During the training session, our students interpreted word combinations from English into Russian and then did consecutive interpretation of the speech of Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, which she gave at the 76th UN General Assembly.

Next came Andrey Zavarukhin, the Third Secretary of the Linguistic Support Department of the MFA Russia. The students were invited to do consecutive interpretation of the meeting between Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Paul Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States, held on November 9, 2021. Another task for our students was interpretation of the meeting between Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Vincent Biruta, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Republic of Rwanda, held on October 7, 2021 in Moscow. After that, out students did sight translation, which is also an important exercise for training interpreting skills.

On November 15, 2021, Natalia Koshkina, the Second Secretary of the Linguistic Support Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, also shared her experience and knowledge with the CITS students. The latter trained listening comprehension of number sequences with further adding of measurement units, and got acquainted with the NATO phonetic alphabet. Then they performed consecutive interpretation of two speeches made at the APEC Summit. The first was given by Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, and the second – by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Finally, Andrey Zavarukhin closed the series of master classes with another online meeting. The expert began his lesson with a task on training listening comprehension of numerals. Afterwards, our students did sight translation of texts related to the Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) and on the Treaty on Open Skies.

Then Andrey Zavarukhin gave students the opportunity to try their hand at simultaneous interpretation of a briefing by Maria Zakharova, the Spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Andrey Zavarukhin completed the series of master classes with brilliant interpretation he did himself, showing growth prospects for the young specialists.