Ten participants from almost as many countries began training this week in the inaugural English in the Caribbean for Interpreters workshop, an initiative of the Centre for English Language Learning, at Cave Hill.

Officer-in-charge of the Centre, Dr Stacy Denny, said the 11-day course was created in order to fill the knowledge gap about issues concerning the Caribbean at international conferences and other fora.

“As interpreters, they have to know a little about every subject … [and] we realized that very little was known about the Caribbean context,” she said.

“So [in this course] the participants learn English, but it is more about understanding the issues of the Caribbean so that when they are in a conference setting, they are more aware.”

Topics include, Caribbean Tourism: A sustainable product, Reparations for Black Caribbean People, Caribbean Governance and Democracy and Caribbean Literature and the Arts.

Several of the participants have been interpreters and translators for more than two decades, spanning fields of medicine, the law, and international development. Countries represented are: France, Martinique, Italy, Lebanon, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Jamaica, Venezuela and Spain. However, many live and work in Geneva, Switzerland or Paris, France. At the orientation session on Monday, participants welcomed the opportunity to learn more about Barbados and the wider Caribbean region from experts in the field.

Denny noted that other initiatives were in the pipeline for the Centre for English Language Learning this year, namely the Panama Bilingue-English as A Second Language(ESL) programme which started in 2016, the English for eco-Tourism with university-level students from Martinique, and the English with Sustainable Destination Management with participants from Colombia.