Virtual class with London Metropolitan University
Another virtual class, organized by the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation together with London Metropolitan University, was held on February 6, 2019. This time the class was even more highly-topical and in some ways unique, because in addition to the speeches in English and Russian, there was a speech in Chinese, interpreted both at the Caspian School and at London Met. Elle Crossley, an English speaker from London Metropolitan University, spoke about the freedom of movement of citizens of certain countries. We got to know about the possibilities of a visa-free regime and the countries in which this regime is applied. Consecutive interpretation into Russian was performed by Rustam Latynov, a 2-year MA student, who successfully coped with his task and conveyed all the details of the speech. In addition, our students, as native speakers of Russian, had the opportunity to listen to interpretation into Russian of their foreign colleague Liliya Smith, who demonstrated excellent knowledge of the Russian language and the ability to select necessary phrases and expressions.
The class continued with a speech by Ekaterina Shamova, a Caspian School teacher. She told the audience about the facts, which foreign students should remember if they are going to travel around Russia. This topic is really important because students from different partner universities come to our School every year under the exchange programmes. At the moment, we are teaching exchange students from INALCO and Forlì (University of Bologna). The speech was interpreted into English by Dina Urazalieva, our 2-year MA student. Dina chose proper English expressions easily and competently and was commended by her London colleagues.
Vladimir Popov, another 2-year MA student of the Caspian School, successfully coped with interpretation of an English speech by Alice Spendley about migration issues after Brexit. According to Vladimir, it was pleasant and comfortable to interpret the London speaker, and he also noted that an interpreter should always be aware of what is happening in the world, and Brexit today is one of the widely discussed topics, including in the Russian media.The class ended with a speech in Chinese by Xu Yujie, a teacher of the Department of Asian Languages of Astrakhan State University. Olga Akimova, a 1-year Master’s student who, besides learning English, successfully works with Chinese, interpreted the speech into Russian. Olga interpreted in detail a speech about the cooperation between Russia and China on entry and exit issues. At the same time, as the experts noted, the interpreter professionally took into account all the niceties of the Chinese speech and competently got the main idea across.
Undoubtedly, this format of lessons is a very important element of the educational process, since the practice of conference interpreting helps hone the skills of both consecutive and simultaneous interpreters.