Trainership at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Trilateral virtual conference with Geneva and Ljubljana universities

On March 4, 2015the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation held a trilateral virtual conference with the universities of Geneva and Ljubljana in the framework of the project, financed by the European Parliament Directorate-General for Interpretation and Conferences. The project is implemented by the group of interpreting and translation schools: the Comillas Pontifical University (Madrid, Spain), Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey), theUniversity of Ljubljana (Ljubljana, Slovenia), the University of Geneva (Geneva, Switzerland) and the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation of Astrakhan State University. The conferences held are special because the professors give detailed feedback to each interpretation, performed by the students. Besides, each virtual class is devoted to a certain pedagogical difficulty. Speakers take it into account while preparing their speeches. Students’ interpretations are evaluated and commented onnot from the general point of view but with regard to a given difficulty. The professorsoffer different ways to manage the difficulty, give advice, tell about different aspects of the difficulty. This conference’s topic was GMO and Eco-Farming and the pedagogical difficulty was asides or digressions. Manuela Motta, the speaker from the University of Geneva with an Italian speech was the first to take the floor and her speech was interpreted into French and Slovenian by the students of Ljubljana University. The teachers noted a good presentation in Slovenian and praised the French interpreter for a good choice of words.Diana Kadyrmatova, the second-year MA student of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation, interpreted the the speech from Italian into Russian. Teachers highly appreciated her interpretation, gave valuable comments on keeping an eye-contact and some advice on managing of deviations from the subject.

Anastasia Lopatchenko, the professor of Italian of Astrakhan State University, shared her interpreting experience, gave some advice onpreserving the logic and structure of a text while interpreting, stress management and interpretation of humor.

Donald Reindl, the speaker from the University of Ljubljana presented his speech in English. YuliyaVasilyeva, the first-year MA student, interpreted it into Russian. It was difficult but Yuliya managedthe speech well and got valuable feedback from the professors.

The colleagues from the University of Geneva also gave comments upon the students’ interpretations, gave some advice on interpreting the digressions from the subject and the use of felt-pens and colored pens for marking logical structures while note-taking.

Following the conference all the comments as well as the speeches and the interpretations will be available on a special web portal so that the students and professors could read them and gain important information.