It is not the topic, but the language used and the speaker’s logic that make a speech hard to interpret: virtual class with the experts of the European Commission

On June, 9 the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation held another virtual class with Michael Somers and Liam Long, experts of the Directorate General for Interpretation of the European Commission.
The virtual class was held at the new Center for Conference Interpretation, and direct participants were the second-year MA students, who are about to receive their long-awaited diplomas and to begin to scale their first (or another, for someone) heights in interpretation! Alina Budaeva and Ekaterina Natkhina made a consecutive interpretation of two Russian speeches that were dedicated to artificial intelligence and delivered by Ulyana Saveleva and Ekaterina Krylova, trainers of the Caspian School of Interpreting and Translation. Rufina Izmailova and Madina Kudabayeva interpreted an English speech into Russian. In his speech, Michael Somers evaluated the activities of Margaret Chan as the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Obviously, holding such virtual classes became a good tradition: the topics that provide an idea about the speech content are given in advance; the difficulties that future professional interpreters will face are also discussed beforehand. Of course, the topic of artificial intelligence is complex by itself, and the titles and keywords of the speeches help interpreters. Being like a beacon, they help MA students to not get lost in the subject. However, some difficulties are rightly called pitfalls because they are less predictable. Interpreters know that the most important thing is not information itself but the speaker’s point of view underlying it. That is why a lot depends on formulation of thoughts and putting emphasis. As Michael Somers rightly pointed out, “it is not the topic, but the language used and the speaker’s logic that make a speech hard to interpret”.