On January 18th 2023, SCIC B1 trainees organised an awareness-raising event aimed at all trainees from the EU institutions. The goal of this session was not only to encourage interpreting as a career but to also give advice on how to be a good speaker and to avoid common mistakes when speaking in public during multilingual meetings with interpretation.
To kick off the event, Javier Hernandez Saseta (Head of the Strategy, Policy and Communication unit SCIC 01) gave a presentation about SCIC, its role in the different EU institutions and how it contributes to training aspiring interpreters. Some interesting questions were raised especially on how to become an interpreter and which language combinations are of interest to the EU. The participants were keen to have a better insight into an interpreter’s work and asked for some anecdotes from the booth.
Two trainees from B1 even interpreted Javier’s presentation into French to show participants what it is like to attend a meeting with interpretation.
Two EU interpreters and members of the awareness-raising team, Natassa Papageorgiou and Lisa Keil, then gave a very playful presentation on how to be a good interpreter as well as about the pros and cons of the profession. They also gave 18 participants the opportunity to try and interpret two speeches in a real booth. One speech mimicked a very bad speaker and the other one was on the same topic mimicking a very good communicator. Participants had a lot of fun doing this exercise and could easily understand the importance of clear communication when speaking in a multilingual meeting.
The info session ended with a point on why speakers should speak in their mother tongue, using some funny examples of mistakes linked to poor pronunciation in English by non-native speakers.
This event sparked a lot of interest among the participants. Some of them are even considering studying interpretation. All of them are now aware of the importance of good communication and sound quality.