On March 18, a group of third-year translation students of Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology visited the exhibition "The Grand Embassy of Peter the Great presented by people and dolls" at UNESCO Associated School Interlingua as part of a practical session on interpreting. Schoolchildren, participants of the "Peter the Great Little School of Translators" conducted an excursion in English. For VSU translation students it was an opportunity to practice their knowledge of consecutive interpretation.
“The translation of the tour dedicated to the Grand Embassy of Peter is a great opportunity to understand what it means to be a translator. Despite the small amount of fragments offered for translation, each of us realized that there are no trifles in translation, since everything is important in this profession: preparation for the topic of translation, the ability to cope with excitement, and even where the translator stands next to the speaker. It is very important that we had such experience! Moreover, we have replenished the baggage of our background knowledge, which relates both to the history of our country and our native city,” commented Ekaterina Kolosova.
“For the first time, my classmates and I had a unique opportunity to test our knowledge under real professional conditions: to act as an interpreter as part of an excursion on the topic “The Grand Embassy of Peter the Great”. First of all, I would like to thank our teacher Evgenia Ositskaya, who organized the lesson in such a new and very creative format. We know that the work of a translator is always associated with the search for information. We prepared for a week, collected a glossary, carefully studied history and looked for interesting facts about the Embassy of Peter the Great. When our work was completed, I saw how enthusiastic each of us was,” said Elizaveta Zhiryakova.
“It was a very interesting experience for me. For the first time, we tried to translate with real people, not from video clips or printed texts. In addition, we replenished our cultural background with interesting facts from the times of Peter the Great. I think that everyone managed to perform well. This is a very valuable opportunity, and we had it,” Nikolay Tyunikov commented.
“The principle of “the best learning is learning by doing” has been used for a long time in the preparation of students of the Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology of the speciality Translation and Translation Studies. The Department of Translation and Professional Communication uses every opportunity to immerse future translators in the real world of this amazing profession. Enthusiasm and a positive assessment of the lesson by our students is an indicator of the ability of future translators to reflect, independence of professional judgements, joint responsibility for the results of their educational work,” said Larisa Kuzmina, Head of the Department of Translation and Professional Communication.
