Virtual class with the European Parliament!

The last virtual class of this academic year with the leading interpreters from the Directorate General for Interpretation and Conferences of the European Parliament took place on June 24. On our part the speeches were delivered by Ulyana Savelyeva and Yuliya Ibragimova. Ulyana Savelyeva gave a speech on how non-verbal means of communication may characterize a person and paid special attention to body language and gestures of the US presidential candidates. The speech given by Yuliya Ibragimova was interesting as well. The trainer of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation raised the problem of “singles” in modern society.
The interpreter of the European Parliament Lorraine Regan also prepared a speech for our MA students. She told about some interesting facts on coffee drinking. As usual, Olga Egorova, the Head of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation, was a moderator of the virtual class. Elena Yakovleva, another trainer of the school, helped assess students’ interpretation.
Despite the fact that the second-year MA students have already passed their Final State Examinations and are preparing for their thesis defence, they actively participated in the virtual class together with the first-year MA students. Thus, as our colleague from the European Commission Paolo Torrigiani stressed during his classes with our students, it is useful to attract the first and the second year MA students to work together as much as possible.
During this virtual class each speech was interpreted by two MA students. Therefore, they had an opportunity not only to compare two versions of interpretation, but to identify their own and others’ mistakes and, of course, to get practical experience. Here, the interpreters of the European Parliament provided an invaluable help to our students making detailed comments on their interpretation together with our trainers.
We thank Natalija Malychina, Katerina Dara-Lepoura, Irène Sevastikoglou and Lorraine Regan for their help.
We are looking forward to next virtual classes with our colleagues from the European Parliament, as these classes are definitely an integral part of the training process for our Master Students.