Voice technique lessons at the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation

It is not enough to have a perfect command of language and know all interpreting techniques to become an excellent interpreter. It is extremely important to make your speech in an intelligent way and make the audience listen to you with great interest and pleasure. The Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation gives its MA students an opportunity not only to improve their interpreting skills but also to attend voice technique lessons. The lessons are held by Nadezhda Kalinina who has been teaching for 30 years such subjects as art direction, acting technique and scenic speech in the Culture College. The voice technique lessons include practical exercises on right breathing, voice training, diction, right pronunciation of sounds and words, training of lamprophony. Within the lessons students train their voice and speech, develop muscles of face and articulation. An initial training stage includes 10 lessons in small groups but for the desired results – correct pronunciation and beautiful speech – one must practise every day during many years and train organs of speech before his/her work (which is very urgent for interpreters having to speak for hours).

The MA students of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation were very pleased with the lessons and some of them even confess that they haven’t even noticed problems with diction and pronunciation which are revealed during the voice technique lessons. For this reason any student or even working interpreter must remember that it’s necessary to work not only on what we speak but how we speak as well. According to Nadezhda Kalinina, “every sound must be heard by a person. One should pronounce words clearly without hurry and sounds swallowing. A word is an action, that’s why your task is to render an idea correctly. And, besides, a word is primarily your daily bread”.