The anniversary conference “Languages and the world: research and teaching” in Kirovohrad/Ukraine

On March 17 – 18, 2016the Kirovohrad State Volodymyr Vynnychenko Pedagogical University arranged another international scientific and practical conference “Languages and World: Research and Teaching”. This outstanding (even under normal circumstances)event had a pleasant and significant characteristic which distinguished it from a number of the past sister-events. It was the tenth-anniversary conference.

It has traditionally featured the Ukrainian Union of German Teachers and Scholars and All-Ukrainian Union of Teachers and Scholars of Translation as well as their foreign partners: Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences (Germany), the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium), Faculty of Germanic Philology of the University of Wrocław (Poland), OeAD Representation of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria), University of Ulm (Germany), University of Graz (Austria), The International Information Technologies University (Kazakhstan) among its organizers.

This year the regular event of the university’s philological community took place under the sign of another anniversary – the 60th anniversary of its mastermind, the Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages  Prof. Dr. Oleksandr Bilous who had celebrated his anniversary in the period between the last year Kirovohrad’s meeting of the scientific elite and current event.

Traditionally, already by the particular day when the conference was held, its organizing committee had managed to prepare and publish several hundred articles that were published in three volumes on 1,800 pages of thick scientific journal Naukovi Zapysky. It cost tremendous efforts and demanded perfect wielding of resource allocating power. Among the authors of the research presented to the world this time were 47 doctors, full professors.

The conference was opened traditionally by Full Professor Oleksandr Bilous. He warmly welcomed participants and read letters of congratulations to the participants from the President of Ukrainian Union of German Teachers and Scholars, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Letters, Full Professor, Head of the Intercultural Communication and Translation Department of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv Alla Paslavska; Rector of the International Information Technologies University (Almaty / Kazakhstan), Doctor of Economics, Full Professor Damir Shynybekov; Ph.D (habil) of the Ulm University and the Ukrainian Free University of Munich / Germany, DOCTOR, PROFESSOR HONORIS CAUSA of the Kirovohrad State Pedagogical University Richard-Josef Brunner.

Some special attention of the audience was paid to the reports of intramural participants of the event who got an opportunity to deliver their speeches at the plenary session and later led sectional discussions (in alphabetical order): Oleksandr Cherednychenko, Academician of the Higher School Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Letters, Full Professor of the M. Zerov Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from Romance Languages at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University, Honored Award-Winner in Science and Technology of Ukraine; Leonid Chernovatyi, Doctor habil of Pedagogy, Full Professor of the Department of Theory and Practice of English Translation at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University; Svitlana Denysova, Doctor of Letters, Full Professor of the Department of German Language, Translation and Applied Linguistics at the Kyiv National Linguistic University; Luc van Doorslaer, PhD, Professor,  Director of CETRA, the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium), Associate Professor in Translation and Journalism Studies, Research Fellow of the Stellenbosch University (South Africa); the editor of many works and sources in German philology Krzysztof Huszcza, PhD, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Philology at the University of Wrocław (Poland); Taras Kyiak, Academician of the Higher School Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Letters, Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from German Language at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University, Honorary President of the Ukrainian Union of German Teachers and Scholars; Klaus-Dirk Schmitz, Doctor habil, Professor of the Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences (Germany); Mykola Zymomrya, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Doctor of Letters, Full Professor and of the Germanic Languages and Translation Department at the Drohobych Ivan Franko State Pedagogical University, DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University, Fellow of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine.

Doctor of Letters, Full Professor, President of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University Oleh Semeniuk also gave his welcome address to the conference participants and closed the plenary session.

Small-scale meetings took place within the workflow of structural divisions of the conference: Session No. 1. Language systems: problems of development and functioning in multiethnic and multicultural space (where urgent problems of general linguistics, lexical semantics, grammar, phonetics, and phonology were discussed under the auspices of Doctor of Philology, Full Professor of the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from the German language at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Olena Materynska and of the PhD (habil), Professor of department of German language of the Institute of the Germanic Philology at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, Artur Tworek; Session No. 2. Language Mappings of the World: Linguacultural, Linguacognitive and Ethnolinguistic Aspects; polycriticism of literary and specific texts, a Field of Discourse headed by Doctor of Philology, Professor Mykola Zymomrya and Doctor of Philology, Full Professor, Chair of the Translation Department at the Kremenchuk Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University Kostiantyn Mizin; Session No. 3. Linguacultural, Sociocultural and Intercultural Problems of Communication and Translation and Session No. 4. Applied linguistics. Computer Instructional Technologies were headed by Doctor of Philology, Full Professor, the Chair of the Department of Translation and Linguistic Training of Foreigners at the Dnipropetrovsk Oles Honchar National University Olena Panchenko, Doctors of Philology, Full Professors of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Taras Kyiak and Oleksandr Cherednychenko; and Session No. 5. Current Issues of Foreign Language Teachers, Translators and experts of applied linguistics headed by Svitlana Shandruk, Doctor of Pedagogy, Full Professor, the Head of the Chair of Language Education and Foreign Languages of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University and Leonid Chernovatyi, the Doctor of Pedagogy, Full Professor of the Department of Theory and Practice of English Translation at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.

On March 18, 2016 the guest of the conference, a striking professor of the Institute of Translation and Multilingual Communication at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences Klaus-Dirk Schmitz held the training seminar and meeting with the colleagues and students which was devoted to the master program for terminology at his native university and its place in the paradigm of the all-European master program standard for the training of the translator (EMT).

Also, some meetings with students were held by other guests of Kirovohrad: director of CETRA, the Centre for Translation Studies at the University of Leuven Luc van Doorslaer, representative of the Austrian Agency for International Cooperation (OeaD), Master Tobias Vogel and the Professor of the Department of Theory and Practice of English Translation at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University Leonid Chernovatyi.

The cultural program for guests of the conference was traditionally offered. The organizing committee would like to express special gratitude to teachers of the Chair of History of Ukraine for the memorable excursion to the chamber Ninel Bokii Archaeological Museum, and also to all other employees of the Kirovohrad Volodymyr Vynnychenko State Pedagogical University for the given help in the organization of the difficult, but such an important for professional growth event of the international ranking.