Internship of students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation in the United Nations Organization!

From May, 5 till May, 16 the MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation Maria Avdaseva, Daria Ledovskaia, Inga Petriakova and Radoslava Maltseva took traineeship in the UN Interpreting Service in Geneva!

Here are the words of Maria Avdaseva – our 2nd year MA student who knows firsthand about the interpreter job in the UN: “If you were asked: It is a very good spring, isn’t it? – What would you answer? I would definitely say “Yes!” The Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation gave us a unique opportunity to spend two weeks in the UN office at Geneva. It is really a unique and great organization, the atmosphere and work of involves you down to the ground. You are wrong if you think that we had rest, boating across the Geneva lake and eating fondue all the time. Of course, we did it but only at the weekends. From Monday till Friday we diligently interpreted during the whole working day on meetings devoted to different issues. The whole internship may be characterized as difficult but extremely interesting. Every day we attended different meetings. The most difficult and I would say scaring thing was the Universal Periodic Review (UPR for short) where different countries present their reports on human rights defence. More than 90 countries want to express themselves and the time limit for each report is one minute only. During the first two days when we opened our mouths to start interpreting the speaker already said “thank you”.  The speed was extremely high. The interpreting seemed to be impossible but not for the UN interpreters. The vocabulary which is different in other organizations was difficult as well: in the beginning we just tried to understand, wrote down and tried to learn. Especially this applies to conventions, which are quite numerous and sometimes their names are replaced by acronyms which are very difficult to catch and understand if you don’t have enough interpreting experience. That’s why it is necessary to prepare for each meeting (which was done by us every evening) and to draw a glossary.

We would like to specially thank the interpreters who listened to us and helped with useful and valuable advice despite being busy. We also managed to attend the meeting presided by Russia. The meeting turned out to be very useful because we interpreted both from English and from Russian”.

The United Nations Organization is one of the greatest institutions where the Russian language and Russian interpreters are in demand. Therefore the UN is interesting for MA students of our School and it was very important not only to attend lecture course on its organization and functioning principles but to find themselves in the very centre of the action, to feel specific character of the job. The MA students had an opportunity to practice simultaneous interpreting (in the dummy booth format) during different meetings. This experience is very valuable because during the students’ work the UN interpreters also came into the booths. The students got their advice and feedback as well as communicate informally. The coffee-break-conversations with Sergey Petrov who has been working in the Russian booth for many years were particularly fruitful. This communication was also practical in terms of methodology of training because Sergey told the students and teachers about the preparation for interpreting both in the real life work and while studying; he shared useful advice, references, ideas for exercises for the  developing of different interpreting skills. Having met Igor Panin who has been working for many years in the mission in Nairobi and now came to Geneva to improve his qualification  our MA students got added evidence that the profession of an interpreter requires development and learning during the whole life.