MA students having classes with Liam Long!
From 3rd to 6thFebruary the MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpretation and Translation had classes with Liam Long, Senior Interpreter of the Directorate General for Interpretation of the European Commission, who has been our frequent guest since the programme was launched helping our MA students master their interpreting skills.
During 4 day classes the students had a chance to practice consecutive and simultaneous interpretation, speech making, and, of course, an opportunity to communicate with a native speaker, i.e. to practice their spoken language. Liam teaches the MA students not only to interpret, but also to listen to the interpretation of the group mates attentively, to identify mistakes, to comment on them and to give some other versions of interpretation. It is quite important to discuss the interpretation and mistakes being made because students are analyzing and writing down mistakes and a way to avoid them, as many of them are typical for most Russian interpreters.
During the classes with the MA students Liam was giving very useful pieces of advice as he does every time he comes here. Some of them were devoted to the grammar – to the use of articles, the correct choice of tenses or the correct choice of words in combinations with countable and uncountable nouns. And, of course, he was speaking about the correct structure of the interpretation, about the maximum simplification of the text, emphasis of the main ideas and preservation of links between separate parts of the text. The interpreter’s emotional state also plays a significant role – it is important to hold back emotions, nervousness or diffidence, but one shouldn’t be too relaxed: as in any other activity it’s necessary to find the golden mean.
Unfortunately, next time Liam will visit us only in June when he comes for final exams; he will also give classes to the first year students. We’ll be looking forward to his visit and we’ll practice our consecutive and simultaneous interpretation using knowledge acquired during the classes with our Brussels colleague!
