ATA Slavic Languages Division

About Slavic Languages Division

The Slavic Languages Division of the American Translators Association provides a forum for our more than 700 members to interact through conference activities, our newsletter, the SlavFile, this website and other forms of formal and informal networking.

Approximately 150 of our members are currently certified for translation into or out of Russian, Polish, Croatian, or Ukrainian - the four Slavic Languages for which ATA certification is available.

In addition to the Slavic Languages – Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian – many SLD members work actively with one or more of the non-Slavic languages of the former Soviet bloc, such as Armenian, Azeri, Bukhari, Georgian, Romanian (Moldovan), Tadjik, and Uzbek, and we consider professional activities involving such languages to be relevant to our division. While our members translate or interpret more than 20 different languages, it will be no surprise to anyone that Russian is by far the most common. However, we are now endeavoring to provide increased representation to all Slavic languages, as well as non-Slavic languages of the former USSR. Only in this way can we live up to our name and our mission.

While most of our members reside in the United States and Canada, some live in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, England, Italy, Switzerland and Argentina. Judging from results of recent member surveys, approximately half our members are native speakers of English while half speak Russian and/or another Slavic language or language of the former Soviet bloc as a mother tongue. Also according to these results, our members have worked in translation/interpretation for periods ranging from less than 1 year to over 40 years. We attempt to meet the unique, as well as the shared professional needs of our member subgroups, and especially welcome newcomers both to our profession and to our organization.

The idea of forming a special interest group for Slavists within the ATA was conceived by Susana Greiss (1920-2006) in 1990. The first meeting of the "Russian Special Interest Group" was held at the conference in that year and drew 12 people. Three years later the group that grew from this core became the full fledged "Russian Division," one of the most active and lively divisions of the ATA. In 1996 members voted to change its name to the "Slavic Languages Division" in order to reflect more accurately the nature and interests of our membership.

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