SlavFile Reprint: Interview with ATA63 DS Dmitry Buzadzhi

October 3, 2022

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The interview below is reprinted from the most recent SlavFile. The full issue is available here. We look forward to seeing you at ATA63 in LA next week!

Interview with Professor Dmitry Buzadzhi, SLD’s 2022 Greiss Speaker

Interviewed by Nora Seligman Favorov

This year’s distinguished speaker was invited on the strength of a recommendation by one of our newer members, Elizabeth Tolley, who recently earned an MA in RU<>EN conference interpretation from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, where Dmitry Buzadzhi is currently teaching. We thank Elizabeth for that recommendation. Since receiving it, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the YouTube channel of which Dmitry is co-founder: «Перевод жив» (Translation Lives). I myself do not interpret, and I assumed that, for me, this channel dedicated to the art and science of interpretation into and out of Russian would be of limited personal interest. But then I started watching and couldn’t stop: I was as entertained as I was enlightened and, well, dazzled by the high-level production values, by the professionalism of the presenters (sometimes Dmitry himself, sometimes one of his collaborators), by the behind-the-scenes peeks at various international forums, and by, as these videos make clear, the level of skill, training, and conditioning (analogous to what Olympic athletes go through) it takes to be and stay a top-level interpreter. In short, I look forward to two excellent talks at ATA63 in Los Angeles: the Susana Greiss Lecture: “Translation and Interpreting as Acting” (Thursday, October 13, 2:00 pm-3:00 pm) and “Anticipation in Interpreting” (Friday, October 14, 4:45 pm-5:45 pm). Please help us spread the word, including to colleagues working in other languages.

Some biographical details: Dmitry Buzadzhi is a graduate of Moscow State Linguistic University’s School of Translation and Interpretation, with a degree in translation and interpretation (Russian, English, German). After earning his Candidate’s degree at MSLU, he taught translation in the English Translation and Interpretation department for ten years before serving as head of that department for five. As mentioned, he is currently a professor of English-Russian Interpretation, Russian as a Foreign Language, and the Interpretation Practicum, at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California.

Dmitry is an active translator and simultaneous interpreter. As an interpreter, he has worked at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Eastern Economic Forum, the Fort Ross Dialogue, and other important international events. His literary translations into Russian include Babel 17 by Samuel Delany, The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (forthcoming as «Жернова неба» [Azbuka]), and short stories by Antonia Byatt. He has published over 50 articles on translation and interpretation, has co-authored two textbooks, and recently collaborated on a chapter on conference interpretation in Russia for the Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting.

He is a member of the editorial board of «Мосты» (Bridges), a leading Russian quarterly on TI, and is on the jury panel of Cosines Pi, an international contest for simultaneous and consecutive interpreters, as well as a regular presenter at such major industry conferences in Russia as Translation Forum Russia and the Global Dialogue.

As mentioned in the introduction to this interview, I find your YouTube channel, «Перевод жив» to be extremely impressive. How did the idea to start the channel come about and how is it produced? It’s obvious that a lot of work goes into each episode. What sort of team puts it all together? And who’s in charge of finding the snippets of old films that inject a nice dose of humor?

This is really the work of just two people, myself and my longtime friend and colleague Alexander Shein, who was my classmate at Moscow State Linguistic University. The idea initially came from me, although we both have been teaching translation and interpretation (TI) and thinking about it from what could, perhaps grandly, be described as theoretical and pedagogical perspectives, as well as actually practicing it since we graduated from MSLU.

On the one hand, I’ve always liked transferring my practical TI experience into teaching and some kind of theoretical generalizations, which, among other things, helps you understand your own work better. On the other, I think we were both inspired by some great educational videos (not necessarily related to TI or linguistics) you can find online these days.

Unlike articles or textbooks, videos are more versatile, give you a more direct tool to reach your audience and get their feedback, and eliminate the middleman, i.e., publishers, editors, etc. Apart from that, we both enjoy dabbling in technology, so it was a perfect excuse to get some gear and get more serious about filming and editing.

As for snippets of old films, we both are in charge of finding them depending on who is editing a given video. I personally love intertextuality and am a huge fan of Soviet cinema, so it’s hard to resist the temptation to insert a movie quote here and there.

Any plans to expand it beyond a Russian-speaking audience?

Not at the moment. We mostly cover things related to English-Russian TI and the Russian-language market, so you need to speak Russian anyway for our content to be of any value to you. We’re always open to suggestions and collaborations though.

Tell us a little about how you happened to translate Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven? Was this on your initiative or were you approached by someone else?

The new Russian translation is published by Azbuka, one of Russia’s biggest publishers. I have worked with Azbuka before, so this time one of their senior editors just sent me an email asking if I would be interested. I couldn’t refuse of course, having read and re-read Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy several times since my teenage years, every time completely enraptured by the depth of the story and the powerful characters.

The Lathe of Heaven has no spells or dragons, it’s more rationalistic and less epic, but it has an interesting correlation with The Farthest Shore, the concluding novel of the Earthsea trilogy, which was completed at about the same time, in the early 1970s. In both novels, the “villain” is someone whose quest for absolute power and abstract “good” threatens to destroy the fabric of our imperfect yet magical world, although in The Farthest Shore it’s an evil sorcerer who wants to defeat death and in The Lathe of Heaven it’s a very liberal psychiatrist who attempts to improve the world in the interests of humanity.

Whether you’re in the booth doing synchronous interpretation or at your keyboard working on a literary translation, you’re bound to run into “untranslatables”—things for which there’s no equivalent in the target language/culture. What are the different ways you handle those instances during T vs. I? Can you offer an example or two?

That’s a great question: “untranslatability” is something I could talk about forever. Actually, things that really are untranslatable are simply omitted or don’t (or shouldn’t) get submitted for T or I in the first place, so there are no clever solutions there. However, as you rightly said, there are many things for which there is no direct or conventional equivalent in the target language/culture, and these, challenging as they are, give the translator/interpreter a great chance to be creative.

The main differences in handling these things in T vs. I are, of course, time constraints and the completeness of context. When translating, your time for thinking and doing research can be considered unlimited (although in reality it is not), and you know the full context. If it’s a pun, a meaningful name, or an expression in an invented language, in a sci-fi novel, for example, you know exactly what its function is, and you can take into account not just its significance for what has been written so far but also its implications for the rest of the text. In consecutive or simultaneous interpretation, all decisions have to be made on the spot, and you should always bear in mind that you don’t know how the speaker might refer to this “untranslatable” later or how your equivalent might be used by target-language speakers who may want to follow up on the previous speaker’s remarks.

To give a short answer to your first question, I’d say that, in T, you can and should be creative and try to recreate the communicative effect of the “untranslatable” for the target-language audience as fully as possible, even if it means spending a long time on a short passage. In I, however, you have to act quickly and most likely focus on just the most important part of the message (e.g., sacrificing stylistic or cultural nuances to render factual information) and try to play it safe. To a certain degree, a bland but factually correct rendering can be said to be a bad option in literary translation but a good option in simultaneous interpretation.

I’m not sure if I have a list of the best examples in my head, so I’m just going to give a couple of the more recent ones. One of the main characters in The Lathe of Heaven is called George Orr, who at first appears meek and indecisive. When he stands up a woman for lunch, she has this angry internal monologue where she calls “that little bastard” “Mr. Either Orr.” Now, “Either Orr,” apparently, is an attempt to dismiss him as a wishy-washy guy who can’t make up his mind and commit.

The same conjunction in Russian (или… или), obviously, sounds very different, and changing his last name to something sounding more or less like или (“eely”) for the purposes of this little joke is out of the question (it would probably sound silly, Le Guin nerds would be annoyed, and you’d lose the likely allusion to George Orwell). So I thought of a different way a Russian speaker might angrily work someone’s last name into a disparaging description of someone who appears dubious. What I ended up writing was “Надо все-таки снова встретиться с этим мелким засранцем. Мистером Орром-Не-Пойми-Которым” (literally: “Mister Orr-I-Don’t-Know-Who”, but the point is, for those who don’t speak Russian, there’s a rhyme here). Which—talking of Soviet movies—actually reminds me of a scene where a woman, who doesn’t quite know what to make of a guy named Tikhon she just met, refers to him, in her head, as “Тихон – с того света спихан” (literally: “Tikhon, pushed back from the netherworld,” again with a rhyme).

Moving on to interpreting, there was a funny episode at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum where I interpreted this year. We were working at a session, the closing session of the day, titled “ПМЭФ без галстуков” [SPIEF without ties/in shirt-sleeves] I saw that the title had been translated into English as “What SPIEF Left Behind,” which kind of made sense because the idea was that they would casually wrap up the day and pick up some odd bits and pieces that may have been overlooked by other speakers. So I began my interpretation by saying something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our session called ‘What SPIEF Left Behind’…” There was a pause, and I peered at the screen to see what the moderator was doing. He was ripping his tie off in a very deliberate manner. So I had to add quickly, “Or, as it’s called in Russian, SPIEF with your tie off.”

In general, how much of the work of Russia-based interpreters working between Russian and English involves interpreting for people for whom English is not a native language?

It’s true that much of the work Russian-English interpreters do in Russia involves interpreting for non-native speakers of English. You will end up interpreting for native speakers of Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Hindi, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, etc., etc. Which is actually a pity for our colleagues because Russia has an excellent tradition of training translators and interpreters with a wide range of languages, and, in many of these instances, professionals with these speakers’/listeners’ native languages could be found. Unfortunately, too many people in the world rely on English these days, although that’s a good thing for TI professionals with English in their combination.

Working with non-native English speakers involves many challenges. On the one hand, you get all kinds of unbearable accents, some of which are undecipherable even to a native speaker of English. Such cases are especially painful because the interpreter may only have a vague idea of what the speaker is trying to say but, to everyone else, since “English” is being spoken on the floor, any problems with interpretation are the interpreter’s fault.

On the other hand, if these non-native speakers are your audience, you may sometimes have to use simpler language just because you realize they may not understand your fancy word choices, even if they are absolutely correct.

Final question: Your English is exceptional for someone who grew up outside of an English-speaking country. Could you say a few words about your first encounters with foreign languages?

Thank you for your very generous comment! My first encounter with foreign languages was hearing my parents (both trained as teachers of foreign languages, although they never taught) talk French to each other so that I couldn’t understand what they were discussing. It seemed to be some kind of a supernatural power, a secret code, and must have piqued my interest.

Learning German and English at school came later. My first encounters with actual speakers of English occurred during my final year of high school, when, by a stroke of luck, I had a chance to spend an entire academic year at a boarding school in England. There was greater exposure to all things foreign when I became a student at MSLU, of course, and, towards the end of my studies there, I began to get my first interpretation assignments.

I’ll add one more thing, although you didn’t really ask me that. I’m not saying that spending some of your formative years in a country where your B language is spoken isn’t helpful for your linguistic progress. It certainly is, and the fear of speaking “Russian English” is probably something I’m never going to get out of my system. However, teaching in America has allowed me to see the other side of the coin. Quite often, students who had formal language education in their home countries (this applies to both native speakers of Russian and English) have an advantage over their peers who just picked up their B language living abroad. The latter may sound more fluent and idiomatic at times, but they often lack more formal vocabulary, don’t have a structured view of the language, and may be clueless about some mistakes they still make because they never learned the rules in the first place.

Like what you read? There’s more where that came from Check out the Summer-Fall 2022 issue here or the full SlavFile archive here.

SLD Member Spotlight: An interview with Shelley Fairweather-Vega

May 12, 2021

In this column of the SLD Blog, we feature members of ATA’s Slavic Languages Division: translators and interpreters working in Slavic languages. Their stories, experience, and career highlights will inspire both beginners and experienced professionals. Today’s post is an interview with a long-time SLD member, ATA-certified Russian to English translator, Shelley Fairweather-Vega.

What is your story of getting started as a translator?

Like a lot of our colleagues, I became a translator accidentally. My first translation job was for School No. 26 for Blind and Weak-Sighted Children in Ryazan, Russia, where I worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English, from 2000 to 2002. The principal wanted a grant from an American organization. So every day for a week, I’d finish up teaching my adorable second- through seventh- graders and then spend an hour or two on the school’s computer, translating handwritten Russian bureaucratese into non-profit-sector English. We won the grant.

After Peace Corps, I had a series of jobs in government and libraries that required the use of Russian and sometimes translation. By the time I started my graduate school program, I was on ProZ and freelancing occasionally. In graduate school, I studied Uzbek as well as more Russian, and began translating from that language, too. A few years later, I quit my day job and became a full-time freelance translator.

What fields do you specialize in, and how did you build up your expertise in those areas?

I first specialized in legal Russian, especially concerning politics and current events. I had plenty of legal vocabulary at my fingertips from working with lawyers, but I enjoyed translating journalism more because, unlike court rulings and contracts, journalistic writing requires (and allows for!) a dash of creativity. As part of my job buying Russian-language books for the Multnomah County Library system in Portland, Oregon, I wanted to research new Russian fiction to identify the most interesting contemporary authors. I discovered Lizok’s Bookshelf, the blog by Lisa Hayden, a prolific translator of Russian fiction. I began wondering if I could do what Lisa does someday. Years later, when I had started translating books, I met Lisa at a translation conference, and I feel so lucky to consider her a colleague now. Reading Lisa’s translations and work by other literary translators has given me insight into how that sort of translation works (and sometimes doesn’t work), and networking through conferences and social media has taught me a lot about the field.

Literary translation projects aren’t constant, so I continue to take legal jobs and creative translation jobs that aren’t exactly high literature. I really enjoy working on computer games and scripts for Russian animated shows for kids, for instance. The task is not just to translate the plot and dialogue and camera directions well, but also to develop an end product that has a good chance of selling to English-speaking producers and entertaining English-language audiences. My training for that consisted solely of watching lots of cartoons on YouTube with my kids when they were little.

Can you share an example of the most rewarding project you have ever worked on and why it felt this way?

Probably the most rewarding translation I’ve published is a short essay by an Uzbek author, Mamadali Mahmudov, which he wrote while in prison on trumped-up political charges. It was a pro bono job through Translators Without Borders. Bringing attention to his plight felt like working for a good cause, and anyway, the translation married my two interests – literature and politics. As an extra bonus for me, my translation was noticed by another Uzbek writer, Hamid Ismailov. He contacted me, and since then, I’ve published translations of two novels, one essay, and three short stories of his.

In your opinion, what are the most important skills of a literary translator?

Literary translation is a specialization like any other, in some respects – you need to master the vocabulary and style of your source material and its equivalents in your target language. That means having a real eye and ear for dialogue in fiction and rhythm, rhyme, and meter in poetry, for example. None of those things works exactly the same in Russian, Uzbek, and English. Having a good background in different styles and genres in your languages helps a lot. And when you translate literature, you almost always work for direct clients, whether publishing houses or authors. That requires the business skills to constantly negotiate terms, seek out new work, answer your clients’ questions, and help them through the process of translation and publishing.

Literary translators also need to be fearless. In this field, your name will be on everything you translate, so you have to be ready for the scrutiny of editors, readers, and critics; and that means you need to be humble, because nothing you translate will ever be perfect, and everyone will know it.

At ATA’s 61^st Annual Conference, you presented a session called “Getting Edited and Getting Ahead in Literary Translation”. What have you learned from the experience of getting your work edited and editing other people’s work?

I think getting edited has helped to teach me that blend of fearlessness and humility that I mentioned above. I’ve learned so much from being edited, from the simplest things to the most complex psycho-literary tricks imaginable. On the simple side, it took an editor to finally tell me that в частности doesn’t mean “in part” – I hadn’t specifically learned the expression, my solution felt sort of obvious, and it always seemed to fit the context, so I’d never questioned it. I will never make that mistake again. But most editing doesn’t deal with simple translation errors – it’s about writing that could be improved. Most suggested edits I see simply tell me that something I’ve written isn’t clear or is triggering some unintended response in the reader. Then I get to do the hard mental work of figuring out where the fault lies and how to fix it, while still guided by what the original text is trying to say and do. The more often you go through this process, the more confidence you develop in your translation choices. You start to be able to predict what will trip up an editor and what their objections will be, so you self-edit as you translate. You build a store of arguments you can deploy when you need to convince the editor to see things your way. You also develop the insight and confidence you need to propose third solutions that solve the problem the editor identified and convey the meaning and style your translation needs to preserve.

When we have our work edited by others, it may be easy to perceive it negatively, get discouraged, or get defensive. Do you have any tips, especially for beginner translators, on how to see the positive sides of getting feedback and when to defend their translation choices?

Seeing that sea of red on the screen when you open up a document with tracked changes is always terribly alarming. I’m not sure that initial shock ever gets less painful. When you receive edits, try looking through them once without responding. Scan the whole text, read the comments, and try to just absorb an understanding of what is bothering the editor, what they like and don’t like. Then give yourself a break and do something else. After your heart rate returns to normal, go back to the text and start responding methodically. That will give you the time you need to let your natural defensiveness subside a little and to consider the suggested edits more objectively.

You will always find at least one edit that you’re thankful for. Respond to that one first and let that feeling of gratitude to the editor carry over as you continue. Even when you disagree with an edit, respond respectfully, either defending your choices or proposing new options politely and rationally. You’ll feel much healthier and more professional, more as if you’re in a productive conversation with the editor and less like you’re in a boxing ring, warding off blows.

Always pick your battles. Sometimes edits are purely preferential changes, doing nothing to improve the translation. But as long as the edit also does no harm, try to let the editor have their own way sometimes. The translation won’t suffer, and it will save you the grief of arguing over one more thing.

What is important to remember when we edit other people’s work?

Remember how the translator will feel when they see all those tracked changes and try not to traumatize them! Less is usually more; try only to suggest changes that objectively improve the translation in terms of accuracy or style or clearly improve the target-language writing. Often, it’s better to ask questions: rather than changing X to Y, ask, “Do you think Y would work here?” And be sure you know exactly what your role is, as editor, in this project. Does the final responsibility rest with you or with the translator? Are you expected to check the translation for accuracy or just polish the target-language text? If you find yourself making extensive edits, offer an explanation: “I’m changing most of the passive voice to active voice,” or “These terms are covered in the glossary,” for instance, so the translator knows what is guiding your editing decisions.

Finally, take the time to offer a compliment or two when the translator has come up with something especially good. Especially if you’re going to be editing this person’s work again, it’s smart – and kind – to establish some rapport.

What advice would you give to colleagues who are just getting started in translation?

The single most important thing you can do is read. Read the kinds of things you might translate in your source language and read all kinds of writing in your target language. Additionally, to thrive in this business, as solitary as it can be, you need to know people. Attend trainings and conferences, hang out on social media, join those listservs. Your colleagues will be your single best source of knowledge, referrals, advice, and inspiration.

Shelley Fairweather-Vega is an ATA-certified translator from Russian to English and an enthusiastic translator of Uzbek. Her translations of poetry and prose have been published by presses ranging from Routledge to Tilted Axis, and in Translation Review, Words Without Borders, story and poetry anthologies, and more. Shelley is currently President of the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (an ATA chapter) and serves on the advisory board of the Translation Studies Hub at the University of Washington.

Website: fairvega.com/translation

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fairvega/

Shelley’s Amazon author page

We would love to feature other translators and interpreters working with Slavic languages in future SLD Blog posts! If you have recommendations or would like to share your own story and expertise, please email the SLD Blog co-editors: Veronika Demichelis and Marisa Irwin.

SLD Member Spotlight: An interview with Nora Seligman Favorov

April 8, 2021

In this column of the SLD Blog, we feature members of ATA’s Slavic Languages Division: translators and interpreters working in Slavic languages. Their stories, experience, and career highlights will inspire both beginners and experienced professionals. Today’s post is an interview with a long-time SLD member and SlavFile Associate Editor, Nora Seligman Favorov.

How did you first become involved with the Russian language and how did this lead to a career in translation?

My fascination with all things Russian might have faded into one life-long interest among many had it not been for a bit of serendipity. I had studied French from childhood through my third year of college. As my senior year began, I didn’t manage to get into a very popular seminar on nineteenth-century European literature (you had to be interviewed by the professor, and when he asked me what I had liked about Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, which I mentioned having read the previous summer, all I could come up with was how funny all the characters’ names were). When I went to look at the list of courses that still had openings, I noticed that only two other people had signed up for first-year Russian. Since I was already enrolled in a year-long Russian history course, I thought it might be interesting to study the language and history in parallel. That year did the trick: I was hooked. After graduating, I attended the intensive Norwich Russian School summer program two summers running. It was one of those programs where you sign a pledge to speak only Russian. Although my one year of Russian had been very intense, the first summer was frustrating—I could understand much of the conversation and joking surrounding me, but I didn’t have the fluency to participate in it. My second summer there (after a year of office work) was better—I finally had enough Russian to socialize. A few months later, I was off to Moscow to study at the Pushkin Institute for a semester. I wound up staying a year and a half and marrying my husband, Oleg. When we moved to the States, I put him through grad school doing office work, but I longed to find a way to work with Russian. I played around with literary translation (Pushkin and Bulgakov—my favorites) and accepted various translation assignments. I was diligent in my translation work, but not really qualified. To make sure I wasn’t handing in terrible translations, I recruited local emigres to work with me. Only after I got my master’s degree in 1997 did I start to feel like a legitimate translator. That was when I first translated the 1863 novel City Folk and Country Folk by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya, which was only published twenty years later (Columbia, 2017). I spent those twenty years doing a variety of assignments—literary, historical, legal, medical—often in collaboration with colleagues, especially Elana Pick, whom I met in 1999 at an ATA seminar in New York.

What fields do you specialize in and how did you build up your expertise in those areas?

My time now is primarily divided between literary translation, my work for Russian Life magazine, for which I translate and serve as Translation Editor, and my work on SlavFile. However, at different stages of my career, I have focused on translating in several areas, including civil society, public health, and scholarly articles. Although I went into translation aspiring to be a literary translator, I had (and have) an equal interest in Russian history, particularly the Stalin era. Another piece of serendipity led to a number of Stalin-era history translations for Yale University Press: the series editor and I both belonged to the same karate organization. I was already fairly knowledgeable about Soviet history, so I was pretty well equipped to translate the material. However, working with Oleg Khlevniuk (for whom I translated Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle and Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator), an eminent historian of the era who spent years as a researcher in the State Archives (GARF), was a particularly excellent education. I loved our email discussions of how to decode the special language of the Stalin-era government and secret police so that Anglophone readers could have the fullest possible appreciation of the information that he was imparting. Working with living authors is sometimes problematic, but having Oleg there to explain anything in his texts that confused me was invaluable. Additionally, we all know that dictionaries and even the resources offered by the internet have their limitations, so native Russian speakers who have generously and patiently entertained my endless questions have been critical over the years to “building up” my expertise, such as it is. Barely a week goes by when I don’t flood Elana Pick’s inbox with questions, and my husband is lucky to pass by my study without my waylaying him with some puzzle in the text I’m working on. Rimma Garn, a former grad school colleague, has also been extremely helpful. Building relationships with colleagues working in the opposite direction is invaluable.

Can you share an example of the most rewarding project you have ever worked on and why it felt this way? What project was the most challenging and why?

No doubt the most rewarding project I have worked on was City Folk and Country Folk. I was driven by a strong desire to bring this little known (even in Russia) gem to light. As for my “most challenging” translation, hands down, the winner is Arthur Tsutsiev’s Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus (Yale, 2014). I know that there are many experts on the geography and ethnic composition of the Caucasus, but I doubt any of them share Tsutsiev’s grasp of such intricacies as the precise timing and contours of the shifting boundaries between Ottoman, Persian, and Russian influence in the eighteenth century, every little change of the Russian Empire’s and later Soviet Union’s administrative designations of territories (from okrugs to oblasts to gubernias, etc.), every fortified position along the many defensive lines Russia maintained during the nineteenth century, and the most minute details of the Karabakh conflict. The budget for the Atlas project was modest, and the work involved seemed to expand with every passing day, as long discussions were held for each map and accompanying text about what language (Russian, Arabic, Persian, Turkic, one of the dozens of indigenous languages?) should serve as the basis for a geographic entity’s transliteration into English at a particular point in time as they shifted in and out of the hands of Russia, the Ponte, Persia, and associated local khanates, shamkhalates, or naibates. As everyone knows, the Caucasus is home to a vast array of ethnic groups, many of whose names have no standard English spelling. There was often no authoritative English-language source to turn to, or one authoritative source used one spelling and another a different one. In any event, I’m very happy to have been a part of the creation of this valuable resource and to have worked with as impressive a scholar as Tsutsiev.

In your opinion, what are the most important skills for a literary translator?

Literary translators must have a good ear for voice—both the voices of their narrators and of the characters, including an ability to hear and reflect all the subtleties of class, temporal, geographic, and ethnic usage, and the attitudes and emotions involved in the original dialogue. Most of all, however, I think literary translators need to understand how much time is needed for literary translation. Over the years, I’ve mined many translations for examples for talks and articles, and even highly respected translators make a lot of mistakes. It takes many reads by the translator and others to weed out all the misunderstandings and infelicities. So yes, skills are important, but they are not enough. You need patience and a willingness (and the finances) to give literary texts the time they need.

At ATA’s 61st Annual Conference, you presented a session called “Balancing Act: Sneaking Historical Context into a Literary Translation from Russian.” What have you learned from the experience of translating a 19th-century Russian novel?

I have learned that it’s hard. Even contemporary Russian is a bottomless pit, and the more decades and centuries you put between yourself and the material you’re translating, the harder it gets to be confident you understand your text. Even erudite native speakers sometimes don’t understand certain wordings. I am in awe at Constance Garnett (1861-1946), who broke ground as the first English-language translator of so many of nineteenth-century Russian literature’s most important works—without the internet and without the paper dictionaries that exist today. She did have the advantage of being contemporary to some of the men (alas, they were all men) she translated and of having Russians around her who were willing to go over her translations, especially the early ones, line-by-line. Despite the obstacles she faced, her translations are still among the best available.

What advice would you give to colleagues who are considering literary translation?

Find a project you love, give it a lot of time, find yourself a number of readers—both those able to read the original and those who can’t—to comment on your translation. Those who don’t know Russian can tell you what doesn’t sound like natural English, and those who do will probably identify spots where you misinterpreted the original, so you know what traps to look out for. If the process doesn’t turn out to be enjoyable, then you’re in luck—you can find something you’ll make a better living at. If you find yourself hooked, then you’re in for some fun. For me, literary translation is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

As for getting published, the most important thing is to make connections of the sort you can make at an ATA conference and have more experienced colleagues advise you on the process. There is no single pathway to success.

Nora Seligman Favorov is a Russian-to-English translator specializing in Russian literature and history. Her translation of Sofia Khvoshchinskaya’s 1863 novel City Folk and Country Folk (Columbia, 2017) was recognized by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages as “Best Literary Translation into English” for 2018. Her translation of Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator by Oleg Khlevniuk (Yale, 2015) was selected as Pushkin House UK’s “best Russian book in translation” for 2016. An ATA certification grader (for Russian-to-English) since 2004, she serves as managing editor for the SLD’s newsletter, SlavFile and translation editor for Russian Life magazine. A native of New York City, she currently lives in Chapel Hill, NC and can be reached at norafavorov@gmail.com.

SLD Member Spotlight: An interview with Natalie Shahova

March 5, 2021

In this new(ish) column of the SLD Blog, we feature members of ATA’s Slavic Languages Division: translators and interpreters working in Slavic languages. Their stories, experience, and career highlights will inspire both beginners and experienced professionals. Today’s post is an interview with a long-time SLD member, Natalie Shahova.

Can you please share your story of getting started as a translator?

I started learning English with a private tutor when I was five. However, as a student, I got a PhD in math at Moscow State University and for about fifteen years I wasn’t professionally involved with languages (except doing some random translation jobs as a student). I worked as a professor of computer science at a Moscow university. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I had to moonlight and gradually became a full-time translator.

What fields do you specialize in and how did you build up your expertise in those areas?

At first, I specialized in IT (based on my computer science background). Back in the 90s, IT translations were in great demand as at that time Russia was flooded with foreign equipment. New devices required user guides, operator manuals, and other documentation translated into Russian. Also, several foreign (mostly American) magazines such as PC Week and PC Magazine introduced their Russian versions. Translating articles for these magazines allowed me to keep abreast of the latest technologies. However, over time the demand for IT translations greatly decreased as IT companies started to translate their documentation centrally and Russian IT magazines moved to publication of original articles written by Russian authors. By then, I was already managing EnRus translation agency. After IT, we focused on medicine through our long-term cooperation with AIHA (American International Health Alliance). Currently, we mostly do legalese – certainly not my strong point. So my job is mostly that of a manager – attracting customers, receiving and assigning orders – and I translate nonfiction as a kind of hobby (this kind of work – in most cases – doesn’t bring real money).

Can you share an example of the most rewarding project you have ever worked on and why it felt that way? What project was the most challenging and why?

The most famous project of EnRus was translating Business@The Speed of Thought, by Bill Gates: as the author is well known in Russia, the Russian translation of his book was reprinted several times and widely discussed in the media. This brought me a lot of intense feedback: the readers of our translation wrote me and even called my phone.

My favorite project was the translation of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss. I was always interested in grammar and semantics (both in Russian and in English) and this book includes many interesting facts about punctuation in general and English punctuation in particular, as well as tons of funny and enlightening examples. I love humor, and trying to make my translation as amusing as the original was a very gratifying challenge. After finishing the translation, I wrote an article on the differences between English and Russian punctuation and on how punctuation marks should be changed while translating from English into Russian. The article was published in Мосты and in SlavFile (Fall 2008 Vol. 17, No. 4).

You translated the book “Found in Translation” by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche into Russian. What was that experience like? Can you share the story of how this project came to be? Did you have an opportunity to discuss your translation strategy with the authors? Were there any particular segments that were especially challenging or interesting to translate that you would like to share?

I bought the book at the ATA conference in San Diego (2012). The authors signed my copy, and I started dreaming of translating it sometime in the future. In 2019, all of a sudden, the publishing house Azbuka Atticus approached me with an offer because my translations of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? by David Bellos, A Language Spotter’s Guide to Europe and Babel by Gaston Dorren, and How to Speak Any Language Fluently by Alex Rawlings brought me the somewhat unjustified accolade of an expert in linguistics.

The translation was done in close cooperation with the authors who kindly and patiently answered my numerous questions.

For me, one of the interesting topics covered in the book was Deaf culture. Below are just two quotations from the book:

Jack Jason is known as a CODA, a child of deaf adults. As with most CODAs born in the United States, American Sign Language (ASL)—not English—is his native language. He grew up in California, so the only voice in his house was the voice on television. As he got older, Jason eventually became part of the hearing world, went to school, and learned to speak English (and Spanish).

Contrary to popular belief, sign language is not universal—there are hundreds of signed languages in use throughout the world. For example, there are more than eighteen different sign languages used in Spanish-speaking countries. Wherever there are large communities of people who are deaf, signed languages emerge naturally, and usually without any dependence on spoken languages.

What advice would you give to colleagues who are just getting started in translation?

I would like to tell them that translation and interpretation is a very diverse field and only an extremely talented person could be a “universal” translator. I suggest trying and seeing what is good for you and specializing in that particular field because there are only two ways to achieve high income (and I think it applies to other professions as well):

performing a high volume of simple jobs, at a low rate;
performing only selected jobs that require high quality, at a high rate.

Unfortunately, customers rarely seek high quality as most of them just don’t understand that translation could be of various quality and that the quality of translation could have an impact on their business (because not all of them have read Kelly and Zetzsche’s book). That’s why forming a base of clients ready to pay for quality can take years.

I found Becoming a Translator by Douglas Robinson (EnRus has translated it into Russian) very helpful because I did not have a background in linguistics. I believe that it could be also useful to other beginners even if they do have a linguistic diploma as the book connects theory to practice.

Natalie Shahova is the founder and head of EnRus translation agency. She has translated some 20 books and published dozens of articles in both Russian and English.

ATA directory listing

ProZ

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EnRus website

Article in Winter 2020 SlavFile, p. 11

Human Rights Translation: An Interview with Lucy Gunderson

February 1, 2021

SLD member Lucy Gunderson has had an active role in ATA and SLD for many years. SLD members know her as a past Administrator of the Slavic Languages Division (2011-2015), an extraordinary colleague, and an expert in human rights translation. This important subject seems fascinating to many, but it is challenging to find information about what it takes to work in this field.

We asked Lucy to share her story and advice with SLD members. She also presented an ATA webinar on this topic in September 2020, which is now available on-demand.

Can you please share your story of getting started as a translator?

I remember learning the instrumental case at the end of first-year Russian. We had to answer the question “Кем Вы будете?” (What are you going to be when you grow up?). My vocabulary was quite limited at the time, but I went carefully through the choices. Doctor – No. Lawyer – No. Engineer – No. Переводчик – Hmm. “Я буду переводчиком!” So I guess I’ve always felt an obligation to remain faithful to that solemn oath I took in first-year Russian.

I held “regular” jobs (English teacher in Russia, document manager/translator at a banking company doing business in Russia, editor at a newswire service) before going full-time freelance, but I always did some translation as part of my job or on the side. I understood fairly quickly that I wasn’t suited to a corporate environment (or, to put it better, that the corporate environment wasn’t suited to me!), so when an attractive translation opportunity presented itself, I started working part-time at the editorial job. That part-time job was eventually moved to another city, so I took the leap and started working towards full-time translation.

Why did you start specializing in human rights and how did you build up your expertise in this area?

I never consciously made the decision to specialize in human rights, but I can see how I ended up here when I look back. I spent my junior year in Voronezh, Russia. I arrived two weeks after the August putsch in 1991 and stayed until June 1992, which means that I witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of newly independent states. I returned to Russia in 1993 and experienced the October 1993 coup and, later, the currency fluctuations of the mid- to late 1990s. This experience living in Russia was what initially sparked my current interests in human rights, international relations, and law.

My first referral for a human rights translation came from an SLD colleague (Nora Favorov). The file she asked me to handle was about electoral fraud in Belarus. I was initially worried about my ability to translate this file, but then I realized that 1) I actually knew where Belarus was, 2) I actually knew who Lukashenka was, and 3) I had read an awful lot about electoral fraud when I lived in Russia, so I was probably better prepared than I thought to translate this. The client was apparently happy with my translation because they kept coming back to me for more and also referred me to other human rights groups.

I am constantly building up my expertise by pushing at my boundaries. It’s important for us to specialize and know our limits, but it’s also important to understand when we can stretch those limits just a bit.

What type of clients do you usually work with and why do they need their documents/content translated?

My main human rights clients are NGOs, although I have also worked with one agency that specializes in human rights. The kinds of documents they need translated are reports for UN Committees, government agencies, the human rights community, and the general public; columns and articles for online media; and sometimes even primary sources.

Can you share an example of the most rewarding project you have ever worked on and why it felt this way?

My most rewarding project has been ongoing for several years and is the #AllJobs4AllWomen campaign. The goal of this campaign is to get former Soviet countries to repeal the List of Arduous, Harmful, and Dangerous Jobs Prohibited for Women. My work on this project has involved translating reports for the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and columns for the general public about this list. Now, several former Soviet countries have repealed their lists and others have shortened theirs or agreed to review them specifically because of the pressure mounted by this campaign. So I feel very good about being the main English-language voice for this campaign.

Another project involved mining on indigenous lands. The affected indigenous group won a court battle against the mining company and had their lands returned to them. Even though the court proceedings took place in Russia, my client in this case had repeatedly raised this issue at the international level using my English translations. I believe this had some impact on the outcome, so that makes me proud.

What project was the most challenging and why?

The most challenging projects are the ones that touch my emotions the most.

One was the translation of a blacklist, published by the Luhansk People’s Republic, of Ukrainian police officers (along with their photographs) who were allegedly actively working against the Luhansk People’s Republic. This list called for the capture or murder of these officers. Even though I understood that the purpose of my translation was to reveal atrocities, it was still difficult to process.

Another difficult project was the translation of a letter from a political prisoner to his wife.

If you work in this area, it really helps to have someone to talk these jobs through with. I have found that my clients have struggled with the psychological effects of this kind of work and are more than ready to talk about them, so that has helped me get through these difficult jobs.

What are your favorite resources for research and continued professional development on human rights, translation, and related topics?

For human rights, my favorite resources are Human Rights Quarterly (published by Johns Hopkins University press), Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, by Jack Donnelly, and Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction, by Andrew Clapman. The first keeps me updated on current human rights issues and helps me understand major trends in this area, and the last two are great for reference information when I have trouble understanding a certain concept. And of course, the Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) websites are extremely useful resources for understanding contemporary challenges, learning new terminology, and improving my writing in this field.

For translation/writing resources, I also recommend the AI and HRW websites because their publications on Russia are almost always available in the original English and a Russian translation, which helps with terminology and writing. I would also recommend any book on plain language, since human rights documents can be heavy on the legal language. I love Dreyer’s English for grammar.

What advice would you give to colleagues who would like to start specializing in human rights translation?

Network, network, network! I’m lucky to be based in New York City, so I have been able to attend several talks at universities here where I made some contacts, and I’ve even represented ATA at the UN twice. The pandemic hasn’t been good for much, but it has presented the perfect opportunity for people who don’t live near universities to attend lectures online that they wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to email a speaker that you hear online and establish contact with them. Both Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and New York University’s Jordan Center have had great online offerings since the pandemic started. You can sign up for their mailing lists on their websites.

It’s also important to network with colleagues working in the same area or language pair. It can be tricky to approach a translator working in the same language pair, but it is always possible to offer editing services to them. It’s even better to approach linguists working in a different language pair because then that translator has no fear of competition or losing a client to the other translator. Finally, I’ve had some success attracting attention from my ideal clients on social media, but this is really a long-term effort the requires dedication, a lot of trial and error, and openness to failure!

Lucy Gunderson, CT is an ATA-certified Russian>English translator specializing in human rights, academic, legal, and literary translation. She has a master’s degree in Russian from the University at Albany and a certificate in translation studies from the University of Chicago, where she also served as a tutor in the Russian>English translation program.

Lucy has been translating for non-governmental organizations for the past ten years and follows the human rights situation in Eurasia closely. She has presented on human rights translation for ATA and the New York Circle of Translators.

She is a past chair of ATA’s Divisions Committee (2015-2019) and a former administrator of the Association’s Slavic Languages Division (2011-2015).

Website – https://russophiletranslations.com

LinkedIn – Lucy Gunderson, CT | LinkedIn

Webinar – Challenges in Human Rights Translation: How to Research Terminology and Make Your Writing Shine (atanet.org)

Twitter – @LucyGund