NEWS

ICU Student Wins 13th Annual Student Interpretation Contest

Update: January 20, 2020
The winner, Ryoko Haruta (right), with ICU Visiting Professor Tomoko Tamura, who provided her with instructions and guidance

The winner, Ryoko Haruta (right), with ICU Visiting Professor Tomoko Tamura, who provided her with instructions and guidance

ICU student Ryoko Haruta (4th year student, College of Liberal Arts; major: Media, Communication and Culture) won the 13th Annual Student Interpretation Contest hosted by the Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, which was held on November 30 (Sat.), 2019. It is a remarkable achievement by Ms. Haruta, who had earlier won the Grand Prix in the Student Division of the JACI Simultaneous Interpreting Grand Prix 2019 held in June.

In the contest, students engage in consecutive interpretation of contents spoken in both Japanese and English and compete in accuracy and expressiveness of the interpreted content. The theme of the contest was "An Era for Everyone" and students from eight universities around Japan participated in the contest.

Ms. Haruta visited a foreign country for the first time with the Study English Abroad (SEA) Program during the summer vacation of her first year at the university. She continued to improve her English skills by taking classes taught in English and proactively communicating with foreign students.

Comment by Ms. Haruta

The students in MCC231 Beginners Interpreting Practice kindly wrote two scripts each for me using the vocabulary list sent from NUFS, so that I didn't have to do it all myself. In the final performance examination, we had a mock interpreting contest, and this experience helped me mentally get ready for the actual competition. Because I practiced with other people reading off the complete scripts, I was able to thoroughly grasp the meaning and concepts of what to interpret, which I couldn't do by just looking at the word list alone. I had a chance to socialize with other contestants and students after the contest was over, where we mainly shared our interpreting experiences and goals, but also chatted about our school life.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the people involved in this contest for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. Also, without professor Tamura's after-school interpreting trainings and everything she has ever taught me inside and outside of the classroom, I wouldn't have been able to accomplish what I did. And I would like to give special thanks to the students in Beginners class, who survived the performance finals with me.