Over 60 participants, including pupils from a number of schools from across Scotland, the UK and as far as Spain, joined this year’s online version of the LINCS multilingual debate. During the debate, our current interpreting students were key in facilitating communication across languages.
This year’s panel included Mr. Paillet, French Consul, and Mr Muller, Swiss Honorary Consul, as well as academics Dr Rob Skinner and Paula Bao, and external contributors Lucile Bossaert and Aida Ferrer Aguilar, an experienced professional translator. The subject of discussion was the role played by lifestyle influencers. Thanks to our team of interpreters, all our guests were able to not only speak in their mother tongues, but also to follow the full debate in all the languages available on our programmes: BSL, Chinese, French, German, Spanish and of course English.
Interpreting students worked from one of our interpreting labs, and we had the added support of recent graduates who joined online to complete some of the teams, as well as two students from Granada University, one of our partners in Spain.
The debate was held on Zoom, one of the platforms that made its name during the COVID pandemic and has since developed an interpreting functionality which professional interpreters sometimes use in professional contexts.
Mastering professional tools is crucial for future expert linguists, which is why LINCS does not focus its programmes solely on the art of interpreting, or translating, subtitling, etc.; we create situated learning experiences, and authentic events like the MLD in order to ensure students are prepared for all aspects of the professions they are interested in.
Our students’ next challenge will be the on-campus live MLD on 5th June. This sold-out event will see our interpreting students working in professional booths or facing an audience of several hundred budding linguists from high schools.