Our Award Winning Language Centre

This is the second consecutive year that Continuing and Professional Education (CPE) and Cardiff School of Modern Languages (MLANG) have received recognition from the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) for being an exceptional language examination centre.

This year we have received two CIOL awards.  We repeated last year’s success when we received the Nuffield Trophy for the Best Group Entry in the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting.  This year we also achieved The Best Entry in the Diploma of Translation.  These prizes are awarded to centres where candidates have achieved the highest combined scores across all the examination centres in the UK and abroad.

Both awards are a great recognition of the hard work of the candidates, which include students from our Public Service Interpreting courses.  Every year we also welcome members of our communities who are seeking professional recognition as interpreters in the Health and Legal sectors and choose to study our part-time courses as part of their preparation for the exam. Credit also belongs to our colleagues involved in processing the registrations of candidates and organising the exams ensuring the whole process runs smoothly and fairly.

Zora Jackman teaches the Interpreting courses at CPE and commented:

“Having passed the DPSI exam myself some years ago, I have a lot of respect for all candidates; I am, though, particularly proud of our students on the Public Service Interpreting courses, who invest a lot of time, effort and resources into their preparation, often whilst working as well as looking after their families. They have my admiration for the dedication to their studies and for their determination to achieve professional recognition in such a demanding yet rewarding profession.”

The annual award ceremony took place in London; in total 15 awards were presented to individuals, teams, organisations, schools and language centres by HRH Prince Michael of Kent, Royal Patron of CIOL. Both the DPSI and DPI awards were collected by Zora Jackman, accompanied by Elsa Cowie, the main initiator of establishing the Public Service Interpreting programme at Cardiff University a decade ago.