The course is designed to continue building students’ simultaneous interpretation skills for the Russian into English combination with the goal of preparing for Professional Exams. Heavy emphasis is placed on learning to interpret high register political texts from Russian into English as may be done in the context of major international organizations. Topics include: current political events, international organizations, diplomatic protocol, nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, resolution of political and economic conflicts. Students are expected to be able to interpret in a variety of simulated professional situations. Special attention is paid to relay interpretation (i.e. working both as a pivot interpreter and a user of relay). Various dialects and/or accents of the Russian language are introduced to improve source language comprehension. Source texts with a higher rate of delivery are regularly used.

Final semester grade is calculated based on the midterm exam (30%), the semester exam (30%) and classroom performance (40%).