Sign Language and Interpretation: CITS Soars to New Heights

The Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation is always in search of new ideas and projects. The School’s new brainchild is a Russian sign language interpretation course to be launched by CITS at Astrakhan State University. The Russian sign language is not something new for ASU: the university has courses on teaching the basics of the language, but the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation decided to focus its efforts on the interpretation component of working with sign languages.

From November, 16 to December, 4, 2nd-year MA students of CITS Valentina Alekseenko and Yulia  Goverdovskaya together with Director of the School Uliana Savelieva and Professor of the Faculty of Foreign Languages Dmitry Grygryshev did a Russian sign language course at Moscow State Linguistic University.

“The study process is very interesting and difficult, mainly because it’s a nonverbal language. The emotional component, which is the basis of many signs, is very important, and you also need to have a remarkable memory to remember all this. It’s not that you are not allowed to write anything down – it’s just impossible, so you need to remember everything”, say our students, sharing their impressions.

Valentina and Yulia spent the first two weeks of their course in Moscow in direct contact with MSLU Russian sign language native speaker and teacher Antonina Shikhova and MSLU staff interpreters Daria Zhumeruk and Daria Vinokurova. Both interpreters gladly shared their experience, talked about the specifics of their work, and gave very useful recommendations to our MA students and professors. The final week of training is being conducted online with the Russian sign language native speaker.

Our MA students also shared their experience at a conference that was held at CITS on December 3 on the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

So, onwards and upwards!