Valuable Recommendations from the European Parliament Interpreters

On 9 October, MA students of the Caspian High School of interpretingng and translation took part in the virtual class with the Directorate-General for Interpretation and Conferences of the European Parliament, the first one in this academic year. The second-year MA students performed consecutive interpretation of speeches from Russian into English.
Experts David Walker and Natalia Malychina represented the European Parliament. They assessed student’s interpretations and pinpointed the issues that the MA students should work on to improve interpreting skills. Teachers of the Caspian High School of Interpreting and Translation were speakers at the virtual class.
Uliana Savelieva speech ” About beauty salons” was devoted to the history of emergence and evolution of beauty salons and the services they provided. The speech was interpreted by Altyn Arupova and Ilya Shuminov.
Next speaker, Maria Avdaseva, told about the history and culture of tipping in different countries, including Russia.
Alina Kireeva and Dmitry Tarnovsky were the interpreters of this speech. The European Parliament experts gave a positive assessment of the students’ interpretations. Moreover, they dwelt on the ways to improve young interpreters’ skills and indicated the aspects requiring special attention. David Walker and Natalia Malychina noted the importance of working on pronunciation in English, because the length of a vowel sound often radically changes the meaning of a word. They also pointed out the inaccuracies in the use of English words and gave variants of words and phrases that are natural to English speakers.
One of the main recommendations of the European Parliament interpreters was the importance of performing skills for the interpretation process. Dynamic and lively speech improves audience’s perception of an interpretation. The virtual class was also attended by the first-year MA students.
They took their first steps in the mastering of interpreter’s note-taking, got acquainted with the virtual class format and keenly followed the work of their “senior” c colleagues.