Translation&Interpreter courses in Germany

Hello Joanna,

thank you very much for the website, it is very helpful! I have a some questions though, because, as you said, i'm stuck for ideas and don’t know where to turn...

I've been living in Germany and learning German for the past two years, i'm not completely fluent yet, but it'll come some day. I am fluent in 4 other languages though (russian, hebrew, english and chinese) and i'm very much interested in moving to the "next level" - actually beginning to use all that knowledge - and becoming a translator (maybe even an interpreter). Unfortunately for me all the universities which provide this kind of studies are too far away from my current location (which is Kiel). I've found some schools that provide private or group classes in both translation and interpreting, I've also seen there are some intensive summer courses for that matter. The options are not many, and therefore comes my question, would you recommend choosing a course over uni degree (as an introduction to the field) and if yes, which? The schools I've found are Staatliche Fremdsprachschule in Hamburg (www.sfs-hamburg.de) (this one is from your website), City Sprachstudio in Hamburg (http://www.city-sprachstudio.de/dolmetscher-uebersetzer-mit-geprueftem-ihk-abschluss.html) and the summer intense course in Johannes Gutenberg Univerity of Mainz (http://www.isg-uni-mainz.de/). Are the certificates that are provided by Hamburg schools valid in any way for the "real" world?
I also planned to ask the very same question in some forums, but I'm stumbling across unexpected difficulties in finding such. If you do know any forums that might help me I'd be very grateful if you'd let me know...
Last but not least, is there any chance you know anything about translation from and to chinese? (I'm just trying my luck here, maybe you've heard something :) )

Thank you very much! Any advice you may have would be very much appreciated.

Best regards,
Liza