AIIC 70th Anniversary Event
Celebrate AIIC’s 70th anniversary with AIIC UK&I on the 7th of October, 2023 from 7:00pm, at the beautiful St Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in central London and online.
A panel discussion on human rights and languages in courts, linguistic justice and what happens when “rare” languages are needed. With Eleanor Sharpston KC, Besmir Fidahić, Maria Cocis, Andrew Constable, and Ellen Moerman. Moderated by Zoë Hewetson.
The discussion will be followed by a screening of Eliane Esther Bots’ film In Flow of Words, an award-winning short film about the experiences of three interpreters of the ICT for the former Yugoslavia.
The evening will end with drinks and canapés.
Please register using the link below, whether you intend to come or take part on Zoom. Onsite places are limited and will be offered on a first come, first served basis. The Zoom link will be provided later.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UIVEHBkBffnTlzt7JLr9JnyGSHvlmRzZVmedrOwBJtM/edit
Please find the speakers' full bios below:
Eleanor Sharpston KC
Eleanor Sharpston grew up in Brazil, Switzerland, France, and Austria. As an undergraduate at King’s College Cambridge, she studied a mixture of economics, modern languages (French and Spanish), and – eventually – law. After interdisciplinary research at Corpus Christi College Oxford in economics and law, she was called to the Bar by Middle Temple and commenced her career as an EEC/EC/EU lawyer, practising in Brussels. A three-year stint as a référendaire (judicial assistant) at the Court of Justice of the EEC in Luxembourg working for Advocate General, later Judge, Sir Gordon Slynn cemented her commitment to the ‘European project’. She spent the next fifteen years combining private practice at the Bar in London with an academic incarnation, initially at UCL and subsequently at Cambridge. Predictably, she specialised in all things European (both EU and ECHR). She ‘took silk’ (became a QC) in 1999.
Between 2006 and 2020, when she was ejected following Brexit, she served as an Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg. During her 14 ½ years at the Court, she presented more than 340 Opinions covering many major aspects of EU constitutional, substantive and procedural law. She now serves as a member of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee (a supervisory body under the aegis of the UNECE). She will be returning to Cambridge for the academic year 2023/24 as the Arthur Goodhart Visiting Professor in Legal Science.
She is a British – Luxembourgish dual national, with off-duty interests in music, theatre, sport, and – naturally – languages. She is usually to be found with her two beloved hounds, Boris-the-samoyed and Rudy-the-hovawart, in Luxembourg, Tuscany, or in a camper van somewhere en route between those two preferred locations.
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Andrew Constable
Andrew Constable is a Court Interpreter at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, The Netherlands, and former Vice-President of the International Association of Conference Interpreters (AIIC). He is a member of AIIC’s Advisory Board (AB), Coordinator of AIIC’s Taskforce on Distance Interpreting (TFDI), Member and former Vice-Chair of AIIC’s Staff Interpreters’ Committee (CdP), Member of AIIC’s ISO Group and ISO/TC 37/SC 5 expert (WG 2 & 3), and Member of AIIC’s Technical and Health Committee (THC).
Andrew graduated from the University of Bradford with an MA in Interpreting and Translation in 1998, after which he was recruited by the European Institute of Public Administration in
Maastricht, The Netherlands. It was at this time that he developed an interest in law, and was awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in EU Law in 2001.
He joined the ICC in 2004 and continued his legal studies, following the International Criminal Law module of the University of Bristol’s LLM programme in 2005. His work at the Court has involved training simultaneous interpreters with languages of lesser diffusion (Acholi, Lingala, Sango and Zaghawa) for international criminal proceedings, for which he took a Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Interpreter Training at the University of Geneva in 2011.
He has also participated in a KU Leuven project funded by DG Justice of the European Commission on training interpreters with languages of lesser diffusion (TraiLLD), and is a member of the European Commission’s DG Interpretation’s Informal Working Group on Conference Technologies. He continues to conduct research on new technologies, distance interpreting, court interpreting and interpreter training, supporting training and professional development initiatives for students, interpreters and interpreter trainers wherever possible.
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Besmir Fidahić
Besmir Fidahić, UN interpreter, author of Linguistic justice: translation and interpreting at the ICTY and one of the subjects of Eliane Esther Bots's film In flow of words.
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Maria Cocis
Maria Cocis is a conference interpreter who set out on her journey at Amnesty International as Interpretation Advisor and Remote Interpretation Lead. In her current role, she acts as the team lead for staff interpreters and coordinators and is responsible for coordinating and providing professional interpretation services for multilingual events organized by Amnesty’s International Secretariat offices and contributing to the strategic development of the Interpretation and Multilingual Engagement Unit. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering for local organizations and building upon her knowledge of foreign languages.
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Ellen Moerman AIIC
Ellen Moerman was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Indonesia. She studied French, English and linguistics at Montpellier Paul Valéry, with a doctorate thesis on translation practices in the 18th century. Ellen is a keen amateur musician, who “spent about half a century trying not to distort too much what people say, write and think in various languages”. She is a member of Legal Experts Advisory Panel (LEAP) of Fair Trials International (https://www.fairtrials.org/about-us/building-a-movement/legal-experts-advisory-panel/)
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Zoë Hewetson AIIC
Zoë Hewetson is a freelance conference interpreter and interpreter trainer. She works for the EU and UN and for 10 years headed the team of pro bono interpreters at Amnesty International meetings.
Bibliography:
Victim Advocacy before the International Criminal Court: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-56733-0
TraiLLD: Training in Languages of Lesser Diffusion:
https://www.lannoopublishers.com/en/trailld-training-languages-lesser-diffusion
Katie Kitamura Intimacies:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/440340/intimacies-by-kitamura-katie/9781529112078
https://newrepublic.com/article/162997/katie-kitamuras-intimacies-poses-moral-dilemma
Besmir Fidahic: Linguistic Justice at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-6155-7