Translator Astana

Last two weeks in August I worked as an English-Russian translator in the Nazarbayev Intellectual School during the training provided by the Cambridge University. The training provided the local high school teachers with an opportunity to discuss the new curriculum for all school subjects with the Cambridge trainers.

First four days I worked with physics teachers, next two – with geography teachers and the last four days with mathematics teachers. Throughout two weeks training we covered a lot of topics such as active learning, student oriented learning, types of feedback and question types, we discussed different resources that can be used during the lessons, we played games that are aimed at engaging students in the active work, we conducted scientific experiments with the materials available in the classroom.
All that time I felt like being back in high school myself: Newton’s laws, gravity, conservation of momentum, functions, sea salinity – all started coming back to me. We watched a short video on astronomy, on our position in the solar system, galaxies and new stars formation – what a great chance to learn something new!
Actually I’ve learned a lot about teaching techniques which was exceptionally interesting for me since I was teaching French in Astana to high school students and I could easily use these techniques and approaches in my work. I learned about different types of activities linked to the Bloom’s taxonomy that help students better understand, memorize, analyze and create knowledge. I have already heard about the Bloom’s taxonomy during my previous translation tasks when I worked in the National Testing center. I am always happy to realize I learn something new from my work and can use the acquired knowledge later on.
It is exciting to be a part of the team that is developing new school course programmes and is implementing it. It will be challenging for both teachers and students, especially since the teaching will be done in three languages: Russian, Kazakh and English, but challenges only make our lives more interesting, don’t they?

On March, 30th -31st I worked in the Development Bank of Kazakhstan where OXFORD training conducted a seminar on loan restructuring. When I first heard of the seminar, I said to myself: “OK, here is an interesting challenge!”   And it was, indeed, because the topic can’t be called a very common one and it’s definitely not something they teach you how to translate at the university, so I had to figure that out myself.

The good thing about the seminar is that I was informed well in advance which gave me enough time to familiarize myself with the subject.  I was reading up on loans, debt crisis, world financial crisis, remediation management, austerity – it was quite a journey in which one article led to another one, one term to another one, one concept to another one.  I should also mention that I had a presentation for the seminar beforehand and I felt more or less fine when I entered the bank on the first day of the seminar.

The trainer for the seminar turned out to be a nice Hungarian lady who had more than 20 years of experience in working in the banking sphere.  Before the seminar I had a chance to ask her a couple questions to clarify some of the concepts that were still unknown to me and at 9.00 am we started our seminar.  First 15 minutes went very well – the trainer stack to the presentation which started off with some theoretical background on loans, portfolio and corporate client.  But already 15 minutes later participants started saying that they know the theory and they are more interested in its practical application.  That means the trainer had to change her strategy and improvise. This means I had to improvise, too. Participants  were happy they were no longer in “a school mode” with a lecturer but with someone who can actually answer many questions they have about loan restructuring and bad loan management.  Our conversation got immediately livelier and more interactive. I was glad, too, because for an interpreter it is also much easier to work with the audience that is interested and active rather than with people that hardly stop themselves from falling asleep.

Mrs. Esther (our trainer) talked about case studies that she was personally involved in, we learned that something a banker has to run a sausage factory and that a bank might have 65 bouchers  among its personnel – all this being a part of crisis management.  We also learned that it’s not always all about business, it’s about personal relationships, too, when it comes to bad loan management. We have learned other tricks, too. I always use the pronoun “we” because at any seminar I learn as much as other participants do and this is something I simply love in my job that is a source of my constant development.  Without the seminar I would have never looked up  “collateral”, “outstanding account”, “coverage”, and others.

Looking forward to more seminars and more things to learn!

On November, 17^th I worked as a simultaneous English-Russian interpreter for ENRC seminar. The seminar was dedicated to a new change management strategy and to the ways of its implementation.

The seminar was interactive; it started with a simulation game: participants were split up into groups, each group being Employers, Employees or Consultants. Participants had a very fruitful discussion; they genuinely played their roles and drew some interesting conclusions.

The seminar was not too difficult as far as translation was concerned, it was quite a general discussion, however there were some specific business terms such as BBR (business benefits realisation), KPI and PPI (key performance indicators and process performance indicators), etc.

The seminar was mainly conducted in Russian with some presentations made in English, so for the most of the time it was Russian-English translation.

It was my first time working with ENRC (Eurasian National Resource Corporation), one of the major natural resources groups with mining, processing as well as logistical and marketing operations. As always, it was an interesting experience for me.