Language of Mass Media: Virtual Class in Translation with INALCO

In December, the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation held another virtual class with students and trainers of Master TRM, the MA programme in specialized translation of the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations. This time, the virtual class was entirely dedicated to the specificity of translation from French into Russian and from Russian into French.
It took the partner universities a month to prepare for a joint translation class: students of CaspSIT and INALCO received texts about the peculiarities of the mass media language for translation; then their translations were thoroughly checked by Elena Kuznetsova and Elena Donchenko, teachers of the ASU Department of the Romanic Philology, and by Anton Antonov, the Director of Master TRM.
Having checked the students’ translations, the teachers prepared a detailed feedback that was presented at the virtual class. The ASU teachers, who checked the translation from French into Russian, mentioned the strengths of the translations, marked out the main mistakes and gave recommendations on improving the translation quality. Anton Antonov also joined the Astrakhan colleagues and mentioned decent quality of the translations into French. In addition, he detailed the mistakes and inaccuracies, explained their causes and ways to eliminate them.
In their turn, the students of CaspSIT and INALCO highly appreciated the benefits of this VC format, as checking and commenting on translation by a native speaker is undoubtedly an efficient tool for improving translation skills.