Final Exam at the ASU Caspian Higher School of Interpreting of Translation

During a comprehensive examination in interpretation and terminology, the School students’ skills were assessed both by their teachers and by invited experts and potential employers.

Over the course of two days (June 3-4) the students passed an examination on consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. Some of them were to prove the interpretation competence not only with English but also with their second foreign languages— this year these were German, French and Italian.

Along with the hardest tasks in interpretation, the comprehensive exam included a terminology component: the students prepared presentations upon results of the projects for the World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO). They presented the results of their projects, analyzed their mistakes and proposed practical solutions to tackle the problems encountered, which would be very useful for their successors — 1st-year MA students who have already started working on their terminology projects.

The examination board included both the teachers of the Caspian Higher School of Interpreting and Translation and invited experts — Geoffrey Westgate, the Head of the Support Section of PCT Translation Division of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and Nina Dzhanalieva, the Head of the International Unit of the Ministry of International and Foreign Economic Relations of Astrakhan Region — who, being potential employers of future Masters in linguistics, could assess how comfortable it would be to work with the Caspian School graduates and to what extent their interpretation corresponded to higher standards of the organizations represented by the guests.

Besides, the exam was attended by Liam Long, an interpreter of the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission, who is paying a visit to ASU this week and participated in the exam as an invited expert. Liam has been working with the students for the whole 2-year period of their studies and like nobody else could assess the level of their mastery in interpretation. Despite the fact that the exam was really hard and comprehensive, the MA students beat this challenge, showed a high level of their interpretation skills and terminology competence and, of course, received a valuable feedback on their performance from the School teachers and invited experts.