You can register to COSINES Pi VI up to and including the 4nd of July 2022.
The history of the COSINES Pi international interpreters competition (recalled by founder of the competition Marklen Konurbaev)
In 2016, a tournament was held in New York between current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and the challenger for this title, Sergey Karjakin of Russia. They had to play 12 games. Each player was given 100 minutes with the addition of 50 minutes after every 40 moves. The players experienced incredible physical and mental stress for almost two weeks. And it all ended in a draw.
Watching this match, I involuntarily thought that the work of an interpreter is in no way inferior to what a chess player does in memory, physical demand, attention, concentration, and patience. Plus, there is also erudition, ingenuity, and linguistic flair, which are not required in chess! Our profession is more complicated, I thought, and immediately decided that we need to hold history’s first Olympic simultaneous translation tournament. So the idea of a competition of interpreters was born.
In 2017, I shared this idea with friends, graduates of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University and their work colleagues, who helped me find partners to develop a competition platform. I wanted this idea to reach as many talented translators as possible, who would become “world champions” in interpretation and famous overnight, no less renowned than famous chess players. So, the decision was made: the competition would be held remotely, the competitors booths would be their home offices, and their personal computer would be the prompter. The programmers did a great job of recreating working conditions. The video was supposed to turn on instantly from the participant’s cabin, just like at a real international conference. Participants could not stop the recording or rewind it. The conditions are extremely difficult! Responsibility in the highest!
The name of the contest was found quickly. Just writing the name of the contest on paper, I saw that the first letters conveniently created an acronym in Russian: the contest of simultaneous interpreters – Cosine Pi, which is minus one. “What a wonderful coincidence,” I thought, because a good translator is a “the minus one.” He is always between two participants in the dialogue, providing continuous communication, but he himself remains in the background. Cosine Pi is the ideal translator’s formula, and so it became the name of our competition. Luckily, the acronym was just as easy in English.
But the competition itself was still far off. We didn’t have the most important thing – the judges. A world competition is only possible if there are well known judges. Who is worthy to judge whose opinion will be decisive in this Olympic competition analogous with the world chess tournament? The opinion of any person, even the most talented and wonderful, will always be subjective. But if the judges include recognized experts, I thought, then, when we weigh their assessments, we will have a really reliable standard of quality, in which the expert’s great experience will be taken into account, and subjectivity will be leveled. And that was that.
We decided that we would screen out the weak at the first stage of the competition, testing participants’ knowledge of a foreign language within seven parameters (sense, style, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, terminology, and coherence of speech). At the second stage, we would examine them in the three basic skills of the interpreter (presentation, semantic accuracy and linguistic accuracy). At the third stage, the best applicants would be judged by the Masters – experts of the highest caliber, whose intuition could be counted on completely, thanks to decades of experience.
I am tremendously grateful to Pavel Ruslanovich Palazhchenko and Dmitry Ivanovich Ermolovich, who were immediately in favor of my idea and agreed to be the first experts and masters of the competition. The idea of reaching out to them came from my old friend, brilliant interpreter Dmitry Kharlampidi, who took part in the search for other experts.
I was very lucky. Every expert and master I approached joined the new professional movement immediately. Within a year, we had the most powerful team of experts on the Russian market – 40 interpreters with more than 25 years of work experience. Many of them are famous scientists, prominent public figures, authors of books and manuals for translators, and members of the august international organizations that determine the tone and standards of our profession. Dmitry Ermolovich agreed to be the chairman of the jury, and Pavel Palazhchenko became the chairman of the council of independent experts. Our council has open membership, and anyone who is interested can come see what a wonderful professional assembly we have.
Support from members of the International Association of Conference Interpreters – AIIC was and is still very important for COSINES. In 2017, completely unexpectedly, I received a letter from the director of the Cambridge Conference Interpretation Course, AIIC member Julia Poger, who became the first unofficial ambassador of this respected organization in COSINES and an expert on our council.
It seems to me that the idea of interpreters’ professional expertise has been in the air for a long time, and so it was ardently supported by universities (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical University, and the A.I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, in the person of the leading promoter of our profession, director of the Higher School of Translation at that university, Irina Sergeyevna Alekseyeva), as well as the public organizations of Russian translators – the National League of Translators, represented by its president Nikolai Duplensky, Translation Forum Russia, and the International Interpreters Forum Global Dialogue.
M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University has a special place in the history of the COSINES Pi Competition. It is hard to imagine a locale for a meeting of professionals that is warmer, friendlier and more magnificent than the classrooms of Moscow State University. We were and are supported by the professors and deans of five faculties of the university (!): Philology (faculty president Marina Leontyevna Remneva and acting dean Andrei Alexandrovich Lipgart), economics (Alexander Alexandrovich Auzan), the Higher School of Translation (Nikolai Konstantinovich Garbovsky), law (Alexander Konstantinovich Golichenkov), and journalism (Elena Leonidovna Vartanova).
For the university’s students, COSINES Pi is a real star factory, a forge of excellence and a community of friends. Perhaps never before have masters and students come so close together at the university on a professional platform. Students left their desks, and teachers stepped away from the dais, to stand side by side on the front lines of the profession. Here, not only can you watch, observe and study things happening on a stage, you can also participate on an equal footing with professionals. This is why the Potential category was created – so that beginners can see that learning and productive competition can and should last a lifetime!
COSINES Pi whipped up some academic processes at the university and gave them a new flavor. Students saw a new and very understandable entryway to the profession. During academic sessions, one question became clearer and more pressing: "How will this skill be useful to me in the profession?"
Today COSINES Pi is an established professional community, the Council of which includes several dozen highly qualified experts. The platform works all year round, without stopping a single day! We are full of plans and expectations. And our main forecast is the rapid ascent of COSINES Pi participants and winners in the labor market among top Russian and international companies interested in cooperation with classy, highly rated specialists! That is why we have statisticians, market analysts, big data specialists, and ratings specialists working for us for year round. The annual COSINES Pi competition will very shortly become an institution of experts that will help professionals to objectively assess their capabilities and receive fair remuneration according to their level, and help beginners to more pragmatically and clearly build their careers, using the COSINES Pi platform to assess their professional attainment and growth potential.
You can register to COSINES Pi VI up to and including the 2nd of June 2022.
The history of the COSINES Pi international interpreters competition (recalled by founder of the competition Marklen Konurbaev)
In 2016, a tournament was held in New York between current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway and the challenger for this title, Sergey Karjakin of Russia. They had to play 12 games. Each player was given 100 minutes with the addition of 50 minutes after every 40 moves. The players experienced incredible physical and mental stress for almost two weeks. And it all ended in a draw.
Watching this match, I involuntarily thought that the work of an interpreter is in no way inferior to what a chess player does in memory, physical demand, attention, concentration, and patience. Plus, there is also erudition, ingenuity, and linguistic flair, which are not required in chess! Our profession is more complicated, I thought, and immediately decided that we need to hold history’s first Olympic simultaneous translation tournament. So the idea of a competition of interpreters was born.
In 2017, I shared this idea with friends, graduates of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University and their work colleagues, who helped me find partners to develop a competition platform. I wanted this idea to reach as many talented translators as possible, who would become “world champions” in interpretation and famous overnight, no less renowned than famous chess players. So, the decision was made: the competition would be held remotely, the competitors booths would be their home offices, and their personal computer would be the prompter. The programmers did a great job of recreating working conditions. The video was supposed to turn on instantly from the participant’s cabin, just like at a real international conference. Participants could not stop the recording or rewind it. The conditions are extremely difficult! Responsibility in the highest!
The name of the contest was found quickly. Just writing the name of the contest on paper, I saw that the first letters conveniently created an acronym in Russian: the contest of simultaneous interpreters – Cosine Pi, which is minus one. “What a wonderful coincidence,” I thought, because a good translator is a “the minus one.” He is always between two participants in the dialogue, providing continuous communication, but he himself remains in the background. Cosine Pi is the ideal translator’s formula, and so it became the name of our competition. Luckily, the acronym was just as easy in English.
But the competition itself was still far off. We didn’t have the most important thing – the judges. A world competition is only possible if there are well known judges. Who is worthy to judge whose opinion will be decisive in this Olympic competition analogous with the world chess tournament? The opinion of any person, even the most talented and wonderful, will always be subjective. But if the judges include recognized experts, I thought, then, when we weigh their assessments, we will have a really reliable standard of quality, in which the expert’s great experience will be taken into account, and subjectivity will be leveled. And that was that.
We decided that we would screen out the weak at the first stage of the competition, testing participants’ knowledge of a foreign language within seven parameters (sense, style, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, terminology, and coherence of speech). At the second stage, we would examine them in the three basic skills of the interpreter (presentation, semantic accuracy and linguistic accuracy). At the third stage, the best applicants would be judged by the Masters – experts of the highest caliber, whose intuition could be counted on completely, thanks to decades of experience.
I am tremendously grateful to Pavel Ruslanovich Palazhchenko and Dmitry Ivanovich Ermolovich, who were immediately in favor of my idea and agreed to be the first experts and masters of the competition. The idea of reaching out to them came from my old friend, brilliant interpreter Dmitry Kharlampidi, who took part in the search for other experts.
I was very lucky. Every expert and master I approached joined the new professional movement immediately. Within a year, we had the most powerful team of experts on the Russian market – 40 interpreters with more than 25 years of work experience. Many of them are famous scientists, prominent public figures, authors of books and manuals for translators, and members of the august international organizations that determine the tone and standards of our profession. Dmitry Ermolovich agreed to be the chairman of the jury, and Pavel Palazhchenko became the chairman of the council of independent experts. Our council has open membership, and anyone who is interested can come see what a wonderful professional assembly we have.
Support from members of the International Association of Conference Interpreters – AIIC was and is still very important for COSINES. In 2017, completely unexpectedly, I received a letter from the director of the Cambridge Conference Interpretation Course, AIIC member Julia Poger, who became the first unofficial ambassador of this respected organization in COSINES and an expert on our council.
It seems to me that the idea of interpreters’ professional expertise has been in the air for a long time, and so it was ardently supported by universities (M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Maurice Thorez Moscow State Pedagogical University, and the A.I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, in the person of the leading promoter of our profession, director of the Higher School of Translation at that university, Irina Sergeyevna Alekseyeva), as well as the public organizations of Russian translators – the National League of Translators, represented by its president Nikolai Duplensky, Translation Forum Russia, and the International Interpreters Forum Global Dialogue.
M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University has a special place in the history of the COSINES Pi Competition. It is hard to imagine a locale for a meeting of professionals that is warmer, friendlier and more magnificent than the classrooms of Moscow State University. We were and are supported by the professors and deans of five faculties of the university (!): Philology (faculty president Marina Leontyevna Remneva and acting dean Andrei Alexandrovich Lipgart), economics (Alexander Alexandrovich Auzan), the Higher School of Translation (Nikolai Konstantinovich Garbovsky), law (Alexander Konstantinovich Golichenkov), and journalism (Elena Leonidovna Vartanova).
For the university’s students, COSINES Pi is a real star factory, a forge of excellence and a community of friends. Perhaps never before have masters and students come so close together at the university on a professional platform. Students left their desks, and teachers stepped away from the dais, to stand side by side on the front lines of the profession. Here, not only can you watch, observe and study things happening on a stage, you can also participate on an equal footing with professionals. This is why the Potential category was created – so that beginners can see that learning and productive competition can and should last a lifetime!
COSINES Pi whipped up some academic processes at the university and gave them a new flavor. Students saw a new and very understandable entryway to the profession. During academic sessions, one question became clearer and more pressing: "How will this skill be useful to me in the profession?"
Today COSINES Pi is an established professional community, the Council of which includes several dozen highly qualified experts. The platform works all year round, without stopping a single day! We are full of plans and expectations. And our main forecast is the rapid ascent of COSINES Pi participants and winners in the labor market among top Russian and international companies interested in cooperation with classy, highly rated specialists! That is why we have statisticians, market analysts, big data specialists, and ratings specialists working for us for year round. The annual COSINES Pi competition will very shortly become an institution of experts that will help professionals to objectively assess their capabilities and receive fair remuneration according to their level, and help beginners to more pragmatically and clearly build their careers, using the COSINES Pi platform to assess their professional attainment and growth potential.
