When you are a student in the MCI, you lead a very active life.
Of course, the classes keep you hopping. Both our Year One and Year Two students are feeling the crunch of a heavy workload as we exit mid-term and go careening now towards the end of the semester.
But there are also all the extras. Over the last two weeks, regular classroom learning has been complemented by a whole series of extracurricular events. These have helped to make the students’ time in the program a rich learning experience in many ways.
On Saturday, November 1, four of our students were fortunate enough to attend the annual Multi-Languages Corporation conference. Often, freelance community interpreters and translators have precious few opportunities to improve their skills and engage in professional development. (The keynote speaker this year was Barry Slaughter Olsen, professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and co-president of InterpretAmerica.) So the Multi-Languages conference plays a vital role in helping people in this segment of our industry professionalize. What’s more, the company is kind enough to make some spaces in the conference available to MCI students. They were grateful for this excellent opportunity to learn and to network.
On Tuesday, November 4, York was fortunate enough to welcome a delegation from the Shanghai International Studies University. SISU and Glendon already have several points of connection. For example, SISU grad Emma Zhang is now a full-time faculty member teaching in the MCI. So we were thrilled to sign a collaboration agreement with our Chinese partners. They have a strong track record and an interesting approach to interpreter training. We’re looking forward to learning and exchanging with our colleagues in Shanghai. What’s more, we’re sure our collaboration will both strengthen the work we do at the MCI and benefit our students directly.
From Wednesday, November 5 onwards, the MCI was well represented at the 55th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association in Chicago. Three of our instructors and six of our students were among the more than 2,000 participants that attended the event. I was particularly proud of how our students took full advantage of the conference: they dressed for success, they handed out scores of business cards, and they first set and then met measurable goals for their time in the Windy City.
As for our instructors, well, they also made their presence known at the ATA conference. I got to see a great session by Marjory Bancroft and Katharine Allen. (Marjory is the driving force behind both Cross-Cultural Communications, LLC and the Voice of Love. Katharine Allen is both co-president of InterpretAmerica and a healthcare interpreting instructor at the MCI. Both women collaborate on the well-known Interpretips series on YouTube.) The two colleagues tackled the topic of summarization in interpreting — something that all interpreters do, but few will admit. Their presentation was both insightful and thought-provoking. There was a lot of discussion in the room!
On Sunday, November 9, the MCI held another of its popular Open Houses. This activity was planned to coincide with Glendon’s broader Fall Campus Day. We decided some time ago that we would use our Open Houses to help build capacity in our sector. As a result, recent graduates and current students of the MCI joined forces to run a series of practical training sessions for would-be interpreters. The event was very well attended, so much so that we had to move out of our lab at one point and into a room that was better able to handle our capacity crowd.
All in all, the pace here in the MCI is pretty hectic. But we’re confident that the myriad events that are part of the life of our program help expose our students to the realities of the working world and to allow them to see how they can make a valuable contribution to it.