Virtual classes

In the second semester of the academic year 2022/23, SCIC continued its Virtual Class programme with the partner universities in Europe. We believe these classes helped interpreting students at various levels practise their skills and receive feedback from professional interpreters.

Most classes this year were on consecutive. Although videoconferencing platforms make it harder to practise simultaneous interpretation, SCIC is also open to offering simultaneous interpretation classes. On platforms like Zoom or Kudo, the evaluators must sign in with two devices in order to be able to listen to the original speech and the interpretation at the same time – a technical challenge which is not always easy to handle, but can be successfully overcome by SCIC interpreters through practice. Converso has two different tracks that allow the trainers to listen to both the original and the interpretation on the same headset. Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Collaborative were also used for practising consecutive interpretation. The variety of platforms that were used for Virtual Classes led to an increasing understanding of their advantages and disadvantages for teaching conference interpreting on both the SCIC and on university side.

On the other hand, as many of you know, SCIC has launched a procedure to create a training platform dedicated to SIM training (OITT). If everything goes according to plan, the platform (or at least a first version of it) should be available in the second semester of next academic year.

The Virtual Classes given by SCIC this year covered 10 languages. In Unit B1, we support the linguistic diversity of SCIC’s work in the institutions by trying to cover all the languages taught in the interpreting courses of European universities, taking into account our language priorities.

Overall, SCIC received overwhelmingly positive feedback from students, university course leaders and the participating interpreters. Many of them stated that the Virtual Classes are an indispensable tool and a valuable opportunity for everyone to further deepen their knowledge. Aside from some minor technical difficulties, SCIC can report that Virtual Pedagogical Assistance activities ran smoothly.

This semester is barely over but we are already preparing for the next academic year. Virtual classes seem to be popular once again in 2023-24. Requests from universities have increased sharply. With output of interpretation at SCIC back at pre-COVID levels and a lack of interpreters for several languages (good news for students and universities!), Unit B1 will have to make an extra effort but, as usual, will do its best to satisfy as many requests for VCs as possible. We will keep you posted!