The National Network for Interpreting and the Centre for Translation Studies, Leeds 3rd International Organisations week, 16-20 April 2012

We were privileged yet again to host a delegation of conference interpreters from WTO, ICTY (UN), ILEA (Bangkok) as well as freelance interpreters working for EU institutions and other organisations. The purpose of the NNI/CTS activities was twofold. Firstly, CTS staff offered delegates English language enhancement workshops in order to improve their professional skills. In return, our visitors shared their knowledge and experience with CTS students focusing on the skills needed for work in international organisations and as freelance conference interpreters. The 2012 event was the follow up of a similar event in 2010 and 2011 and received a very positive appraisal.

One of the highlights of the week was the Outreach event on 19 April where the delegates participated in an open forum organised for undergraduate and postgraduate students of the School of Modern Languages and students from regional universities. The purpose of the event was to inform students about the diversity of the interpreting career, both in-house and freelance. About 50 students attended the forum. At the end of the event some undergraduate students commented that before the forum they had limited knowledge of a career in Conference Interpreting and how the forum helped them to get a better understanding of it.

Event for teachers of UG interpreting!

Our Training teachers of interpreting workshop took place on 9 November 2011 at the University of Leeds. Offered in partnership with LLAS, the session involved MFL tutors teaching, or interested in teaching, interpreting at undergraduate level.

With the growing demand for English mother-tongue interpreters in international organisations, many MFL departments are adding interpreting modules to their curricula. This has brought us back to a question high on the agenda a few decades ago; should interpreting be taught at undergraduate or postgraduate level?

Attendees were able to learn more about the difference between interpreting training at these levels, explore the skills undergraduates will need to progress to professional training and discover the effectiveness of interpreting as a language-learning tool.

NNI in print!

The NNI has recently been featured in two notable journals. An article appeared in the Autumn 2010 edition of the Scottish Language Review, reporting on our 18 June trainer and teacher event, ‘Engaging Tomorrow’s Interpreters’ (see Event Highlights section for more on this). Shortly after this the network was featured with a two-page article in the Chartered Institute of Linguists publication, The Linguist.

Thanks to all those who have supported NNI activity throughout 2010!

NNI at ALT-C 2010

ALT-C is the largest annual e-learning event in the UK attended by the crème de la crème of instructional designers and learning technologists (more than 500 of them usually), so it really is a big deal.

You can imagine how proud the NNI project was to be present at ALT-C 2010 with three (yes, you have heard us right: THREE) different NNI instalments:

Interpreting Skills Map @ ALT-C 2010

  • one demo of the Note -Taking multimedia interactive resource which was shortlisted for the Epigeum video award (yes, the diploma should say NNI instead of Dragos’ name and we were tempted to Photoshop it … 😉 )

  • a 30-minute demo of our resources and how we managed to make them so appealing, interactive, and media-rich (the demo started with the following short and funky presentation and then we looked at 7 of our most popular resources in more detail)

All in all, it was great fun and the NNI must have set some kind of a record: first time in with the big players and already doing lots of presenting and networking. Have a look at the resources on our website and see why we were so successful at ALT-C 2010.

NNI resource wins prestigious JORUM commendation

The National Network for Interpreting would like to thank all the members of the community who have voted for our entry in this year’s JORUM competition.

Our resource has been awarded a commended prize and will be presented live at ALT-C 2010 on Wed, 8 September, in a dedicated slot between 5.15 and 6 pm. Do come and say Hello if you are in the neighbourhood. For full details of the final six resources, please follow this link.

The NNI would like to thank JORUM for the initiative and also to congratulate all the participants in this competition.