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SlavFile Reprint – Tracking Down Russian Historical Terminology: A Tale of Two Terms and Two Resources

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The article below is reprinted from the most recent SlavFile. The full issue is available here.

Tracking Down Russian Historical Terminology: A Tale of Two Terms and Two Resources

By Nora Seligman Favorov

In the introduction to Yuri Aleksandrovich Fedosiuk’s book «Что непонятно у классиков или Энциклопедия русского быта XIX века» (What is Unclear in the Classics or An Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Russian Daily Life; Moscow: Flinta, 2017), the author’s son explains the book’s origins by quoting a 1959 letter-to-the-editor his father wrote to the journal «Вопросы литературы» (Questions of Literature):

For an ever-expanding subset of contemporary readers, hundreds of expressions encountered in the writings of the Russian classics and reflecting social relationships and the everyday features of prerevolutionary Russia are becoming stumbling blocks, being either utterly baffling or misunderstood. […] As someone acquainted with only the metric system, it is unclear to me whether a nobleman possessing two hundred десятина of land is rich or poor, whether a merchant who has consumed a пол штоф of vodka is very drunk, and whether an official who gives a tip of a синенькая, a красенкая, or a семитка is being generous. Which character in a story holds a higher position when one is addressed as ваше благородие, another as ваше сиятельство, and a third as ваше превосходительство? (All translations of Fedosiuk are my own.)

Reading this gave me a warm, fuzzy “I’m not alone!” sort of feeling.

Fedosiuk ends his letter by urging philologists and historians to undertake the task of creating reference works that elucidate the terminology of prerevolutionary daily life in order to help a wide range of readers (first and foremost literature teachers, students, and schoolchildren) to “more deeply penetrate the works of the classics, reinvigorating many lines that have faded since the concepts they deal with have, in our era, been relegated to archives.”

Literary translators are not listed among those needing to “more deeply penetrate” the Russian classics, but we might be the ones with the most desperate practical need. Of course, Fedosiuk wrote his letter before the internet, where explanations of most if not all of the puzzling terms he names can be easily found. And since 1959, Fedosiuk himself has produced the valuable resource cited above (available in physical form through Amazon, kniga.com or for download through LitRes.com).

I first heard of this book from Erik McDonald, professor of Russian literature, literary translator, and blogger. At the time, we were both translating works by the prolific, popular, and currently almost-unheard-of nineteenth-century writer Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya (~1822–1889), who published under the pseudonym V. Krestovsky. He was working on her 1879 novella «Свидание» (The Meeting, 2022), and I was working on «Братец» (The Brother; the original was published in 1858 and the translation will soon be pitched to a publisher). Both these works had rather puzzling references to билеты. Erik had already discovered Fedosiuk’s book and found the explanation we needed in the chapter on Ценные бумаги (loosely, financial instruments): билет was the term commonly used for the piece of paper representing ownership of a sum of money that had been deposited with a financial institution. This fit the context in both our novellas nicely.

But the story behind the билет appearing in my novella involved another puzzle Erik and Fedosiuk helped me solve. In The Brother, before any билет is mentioned, we learn that one of the sisters had inherited 5,000 rubles from a godmother and that sum had been “положенная в N-ском приказе”—deposited in a “приказ” in the town of N (the seat of the province in which the story takes place). Toward the novella’s conclusion the sister “взяла билет приказа и понесла его брату” (retrieved the приказ билет and brought it to her brother). Приказ? I knew by then that the term приказ had long since gone out of use as a term for agencies/offices of the Russian government, with one exception: the Приказ общественного призрения.

This term brings me to another usually invaluable resource for R>E translators dealing with the prerevolutionary period: Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, compiled by Sergei G. Pushkarev and edited by George Vernadsky and Ralph T. Fisher, Jr. (Yale University Press, 1970). Several years ago I had trouble finding this book for any reasonable price, but I see that it is now easily and affordably available on, for example, AbeBooks. (As a side note, I was thrilled when I did finally receive a copy I ordered from Amazon and found a lovely cursive inscription inside the front cover: “Susan C. Brownsberger, 1976.” Brownsberger [1935–2021] is my idol; her brilliant translation of Iskander’s Sandro of Chegem is what first inspired me to pursue literary translation.)

Pushkarev offers the following entry for Приказ общественного призрения:

Distinct from the Muscovite приказы, these departments were established in each ГУБЕРНИЯ capital by the statutes on губерния administration of 1775. They dealt with health, welfare, and primary education. After the introduction of the ЗЕМСТВО in 1864, these functions were transferred to the земство institutions, and the приказы общественного призрения remained only in those губерния that did not have the земство organization.

Pushkarev has helped me solve many terminological riddles, but this entry wasn’t helpful at all. This приказ didn’t sound like the sort of institution in which money would be deposited. At least one historian, John P. LeDonne, translates the name of this institution as Board of Public Welfare. “Board” is more appropriate than, say, “Office,” since it apparently “consisted of six assessors from the intermediate courts representing the nobility, the townsmen, and the peasants of the treasury, but it met under the chairmanship of the governor only during the winter months” (John P. LeDonne, Absolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Russian Political Order, 1700-1825, Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 254).

Again, Erik guided me to a passage about this приказ in Fedosiuk’s chapter on “Губернские власти” (provincial government).

The приказ общественного призрения, which was responsible for local vocational schools and all manner of medical and charitable institutions, came directly under the authority of governors. This приказ had the right to engage in financial operations for the purpose of augmenting its meager budget. Knowing this sheds light on Dobchinsky’s response to Khlestakov’s request for a loan of “about a thousand rubles”: “My money, I regret to inform you, is deposited with the приказ общественного призрения.”

Indeed, this приказ does come up in Gogol’s Inspector General, as Fedosiuk points out. The two translations of the play I was able to find on Google Books render this institution as “the State Savings Bank” (Thomas Seltzer) or “the state bank” (Fruma Gottschalk). This is understandable. It would distract and confuse readers of Gogol’s brilliant play if Dobchinsky had for some unknown reason deposited his money with the Board of Public Welfare. The only version of The Inspector General I have on my shelves, published in the National Textbook Company’s “Annotated Reader for Students of Russian” series in 1993, glosses all the vocabulary except for this tricky term, leaving it to the imagination of struggling students of Russian.

Some readers of SlavFile may recall a presentation I made at the 2020 ATA Annual Conference about translating historical terminology, in which I discussed the challenges I faced translating the 1863 novel City Folk and Country Folk. This novel was by Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya’s younger sister, Sofia. The Khvoshchinskaya sisters grew up in a close-knit, well-educated, and poor noble family. When Sofia and Nadezhda were children, the family was financially ruined after their father was falsely accused of misappropriating government funds. They lost their estate and he was disqualified from government service. During the eleven years that passed until he was exonerated, both daughters, but especially Nadezhda, helped their father as he struggled to support the family through copy work—reproducing calligraphic versions of government documents and topographic maps. The daughters’ detailed knowledge of the bureaucratic workings of Russia’s provincial governments in the mid-nineteenth century is reflected in their work, and this makes them both exceptionally hard to translate. Their fiction is filled with passing mentions of phenomena that would have been immediately familiar to their educated contemporaries but require hours of research by translators diligent enough to burrow down the necessary investigatory rabbit holes.

I am grateful to Erik McDonald for introducing me to Fedosiuk’s book and to Yuri Alexandrovich for writing it. One drawback for people wishing to use it as a reference is that it is not designed for quick searches. The eBook is not searchable, so when you want to look something up you have to go the TOC at the end and read through the chapters potentially related to your term. Pushkarev’s Dictionary is organized as such (with the Russian words in Latin rather than Cyrillic letters and alphabetized A-Z rather than А-Я). Its primary drawback is that it was published in 1970 and has never been updated or expanded.

There are surely many other resources and tricks for translators of prerevolutionary Russian texts. Beside the obvious approach of perusing Russian-language material that comes up in response to internet searches, I often plug the puzzling term into Yandex and/or Google in transliterated form to see if Anglophone historians have written about the given phenomenon. That is how I found the LeDonne text cited above. I’d love to hear what tricks and texts my colleagues use to research Russian historical terminology: contact me, or write an article of your own. Tales of terminological searches are yawn-inducing for ordinary mortals, but if you’ve made it to the end of this article, you’re no ordinary mortal.

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. She serves as translation editor for Russian Life magazine and took over as chief editor of SlavFile in 2021 after Lydia Razran Stone’s retirement. She can be reached at norafavorov@gmail.com.

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SlavFile Reprint – Translating Okudzhava: Turning «Песенка старого шарманщика» into “The Organ-Grinder Ditty”

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The article below is reprinted from the most recent SlavFile. The full issue is available here.

Translating Okudzhava: Turning «Песенка старого шарманщика» into “The Organ-Grinder Ditty”

By Vladimir Kovner

I suspect that I am a generation or two removed from the majority of SlavFile’s current readers. Nevertheless, I hope that they all know the name Bulat Okudzhava and are familiar with at least some of his works. In the late ʾ50s, Okudzhava began to perform his poems/songs—basically, poetry set to music accompanied by guitar—for his friends. Thus began the highly influential era of the Russian “bards,” of which Okudzhava is considered to be progenitor. I got my very first tape recordings of one of his performances in late 1959 and met him in person in 1962 at a home concert in Leningrad. Later I had the pleasure of recording his performances in Leningrad, Moscow, Detroit, and Oberlin, Ohio.

I’d like to start by saying a few words about the uniqueness of his poetry. In 2011, A.V. Sycheva (a professor at the University of Magadan and a protégé of the outstanding scholar Professor Roman Tchaikovsky) remarked in her dissertation “About Translations of Okudzhava’s Poetry into English” that the majority of the bard’s translators recreate only the basic sense of his poetry, their translations being interlinear or free, not even rhymed. In her opinion, only slightly more than 16 percent can be considered adequate. Later, explaining why even some decent renderings cannot be considered adequate, she explains: “In most cases, the completed translations of Okudzhava’s lyrics do not comply with all the criteria of that genre. Even if the original poetic texts of his songs are reflected quite successfully in the English language versions, some extremely important components of his poetry, such as its folkloristic character and musicality, are quite often completely absent in translation.” Later, we’ll come back to the discussion of that problem.

Before his first performance in the Leningrad House of Art in 1960, Okudzhava said to Alexander Volodin, a well-known playwright and poet who was tasked with introducing Bulat to the audience: “Don’t call my works songs. I am a poet. They are poems.” But later Volodin added to that story: “Long ago poets were called singers. They composed verses and melodies, and performed them with their own zither accompaniment… In our time, in our country, the first one to accomplish this was Okudzhava. Every word of his poetry is a word of a song that is supposed to soar over this vast country.”

The uniqueness of Bulat’s poetry is in his incredible musicality. We translators have to understand that more often than not his poetry is not simply verses. Even his poems that for some reason were not set to music beg to be sung. According to Vladimir Frumkin, a musicologist, one of the founders of the “bard” movement, and one of the best if not the best performer of Okudzhava’s songs, his verse-songs are unique because they have been created/composed as a cohesive whole that comprises not only lyrics and music but also the author’s own performance, his unique, somewhat restrained voice, a subtly ironic manner, a deeply individual cadence, and his guitar accompaniment. Together, these elements give us a unique genre known as “guitar poetry.” In his song «Главная песенка»/“The Paramount Song” (the version below is translated by Lydia Razran Stone and myself and was published in the journal Readings, no. 31, summer 2015). Bulat demonstrates how to create a song (music and lyrics) as a single whole:

“Okudzhava’s songs are more a phenomenon of oral than of written poetry, like folksongs” (Vladimir Frumkin). Let’s add that Okudzhava heard music emanating from everywhere (e.g., from Moscow streets, from architecture), then he constantly and naturally incorporated the most diverse musical instruments and genres into his poetry: guitars, horns, drums, flutes, clarinets, waltzes, marches, and so on. Furthermore, as he described it: “I write when I feel like it, under the influence of various moods and impulses that are sometimes not even clear to me…” And finally, he possessed a remarkable musical ear. This is why I believe it is essential for translators of Okudzhava’s songs to spend time listening to how he performs them to be sure that not only their translation adheres to the original meter and rhyme pattern (that is relatively simple), but that it is singable to the original melody, with the rhythm pattern of the translated song matching the pattern in the original.

Наверное, самую лучшую
На этой земной стороне
Хожу я и песенку слушаю –
Она шевельнулась во мне.
Она еще очень неспетая.
Она зелена как трава.
Но чудится музыка светлая,
И строго ложатся слова…		 The best thing that life on Earth brings to me,
That causes most joy in my heart,
I walk, and from nowhere it sings to me,
A song that is longing to start.
Not yet a true song, but developing;
Unripe, like green fruit on the vine.
The melody’s splendid, enveloping,
And words fall precisely in line…

Returning to A.V. Sycheva’s analysis, obviously the majority of translators were either tone-deaf or failed to consider the melodical component important and based their renderings on his written poetry.

Let’s come back, at last, to the subject of our discussion: a very unusual poem-song, «Песенка старого шарманщика». Before I describe the very interesting and complex process of translating that song into English, I’d like to say that the following translation represents my efforts to match the brilliance of Okudzhava’s original lyrics and my very useful and important periodic discussions with Nora Favorov, who critiqued some of my early versions and suggested a few interesting alternatives that I gratefully accepted.

Песенка старого шарманщика. Булат Окуджава.
                                                      Е. Евтушенко

Шарманка-шарлатанка, как сладко ты поешь!
Шарманка-шарлатанка, куда меня зовешь?

Шагаю еле-еле – вершок за пять минут.
Ну как дойти до цели, когда ботинки жмут?..

Работа есть работа, работа есть всегда,
Хватилo б только пота на все мои года.

Расплата за ошибки – ведь это тоже труд.
Хватило бы улыбки, когда под ребра бьют.
Работа – есть работа…
                                                   Composed circa 1960–62

The melody follows a waltz rhythm (one-two-three, one-two-three), a naïve charming waltz for a street-organ. (The standard rhythms for street-organ music were older forms of dances such as the waltz, two-step, polka, etc.)

“The Organ-Grinder Ditty” by Bulat Okudzhava
dedicated to Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Oh, charlatan, street organ! Your singing is so sweet.
You devious street organ! Where do you summon me?

I trudge on, legs feel heavy, five minutes – just one inch.
How can I reach my haven in boots that cramp and pinch?

What’s work? Just work I get. Jobs – plenty, good and bad.
God, help me toil in blood-n-sweat through years that lay ahead.

A payback for my blunders – that’s also labor, but…
Can I still smile, I wonder, when punched straight in the gut?
What’s work? Just work I get…

There are eight lines in this short song; each one is six poetic feet long—hexameter, consisting naturally (remember, it’s a waltz) of two iambic trimeters. Every two consecutive lines (1-2, 3-4 and so on) are rhymed at the end and in the middle of lines. All the rhymes are perfect (exact). It’s a straightforward pattern for a translator.

Let’s begin with the title of that song: Песенка старого шарманщика. Why did Okudzhava call it “песенка” rather than “песня?” Actually, he used both titles many times. Possibly through this choice Okudzhava was trying to underline the idea that «песенка» (“ditty” in English or chansonette in the French manner) brings an element of intimacy between a performer and listeners. Also, it is possible that while he often repeated that his songs were foremost poems and he was basically performing guitar poetry, he underestimated his exceptional musical gift and incredible merits and the value of his songs’ melodical aspect, meaning for him his songs really were just ditties. It is interesting that in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Ada the author refers to Okudzhava’s “Sentimental March” as a “…soldier dit[ty] of singular genius…” Based on all that, we will render the English title of this work as: “The Organ-Grinder Ditty.”

We have to repeat that this poem is very unusual: the whole poem, including its title, is written as a witty satire in the best traditions of Aesop. (Okudzhava wrote two more poem-songs of this type.)

Before singing this song for Western audiences, Vladimir Frumkin used to tell them that the old organ-grinder in this song by Bulat Okudzhava is not really an organ-grinder. Soviet listeners understood this perfectly well: the author was hinting at what the creative intelligentsia—poets, writers, composers, and artists—had to endure working under the pressures of total censorship. As Fyodor Raskolnikov wrote in an open letter to Stalin in 1938: “You have forced art into a straitjacket in which it suffocates, withers and dies.” By using an organ-grinder as camouflage, Okudzhava was trying to disguise the true meaning of the song from the censors, the literary gendarmes, Soviet cultural authorities, and, of course, the communist media. There is a curious story about this song connected with Professor Charles Gribble of Ohio State University, who in 1966 founded Slavica Publishers. In 1976, Frumkin suggested that he publish an encyclopedia of Russian bards and sang him several songs. After hearing “The Organ-Grinder Ditty,” Professor Gribble, who at the time was making frequent trips to the Soviet Union, replied: “No way. I cannot publish anti-Soviet poems. The Russians will never let me in again.” Obviously, Professor Gribble saw through the Aesopian language, and of course Okudzhava’s audience in the Soviet Union (both his fans and the authorities) were even less likely to miss the song’s true meaning.

The song was composed circa 1960–62, performed at home concerts and, like the rest of his songs, widely distributed by way of “magnitizdat” tape recordings. It was not officially published until 1983.

What pushed Bulat Okudzhava over the edge and made him compose a song in which a lilting melody and the quaint image of a street-grinder are paired with a series of much darker images: the singer is too hobbled by painful shoes to walk more than an inch in five minutes, has to pay for his blunders, and is punched in the gut: шагаю еле-еле, ботинки жмут; расплата за ошибки, под ребра бьют.

We have to recall what the situation was at the time this song was written.

It was composed around the same time as the 22nd Communist Party Congress. The brightest prospects for the country within the next twenty years were heralded from the podium, along with confident assurances that it would attain communism, that all socioeconomic differences between the city and the countryside and between toilers of the body and the mind would disappear, and so on and so forth. In short, universal rejoicing was in order.

What about Bulat at that time? According to Professor Anatoly Kulagin, Okudzhava’s name always sounded suspicious to the Soviet regime. They sensed covert, if not overt, opposition, an unwillingness to “play along” by performing ritual displays of loyalty and producing art with the required slant in exchange for the ability to publish, to be granted a government apartment, summer dacha, or sanatorium stay, etc. In spite of the fact that at that time Okudzhava was the head of the poetry division at the most prominent national literary weekly in the former Soviet Union, Literaturnaya Gazeta, authorization for release of his first recording was blocked, Kiev TV cut all of Okudzhava’s poetry from a TV program based on the contents of Literaturnaya Gazeta, and, in a May 1961 speech, the secretary of the Komsomol’s Central Committee characterized Okudzhava’s songs as fit only for a boudoir, a remark intended as a huge insult for a Soviet poet.

Here is Okudzhava’s reaction in his own words: “I started to sing my poems, not imagining what a scandal was to break out in a short time. Guitarists accused me of lack of talent…composers of lack of professionalism… singers of having no voice at all, and all of them together of impudence and banality…The officials accused me of pessimism, anti-patriotism, pacifism, and the press backed them up” (from the book ОКУДЖАВА 65 песен, by Vladimir Frumkin, English translation by Eve Shapiro). Already a member of the Union of Writers, after working at Literaturnaya Gazeta for less than four years, in early 1962 Okudzhava left the newspaper. Obviously Bulat was sick and tired of all the government’s “sweet promises”—actually endless lies, and the belittling criticism of so-called cultural workers and “brother-writers” organized “from the bureaucratic top.” Fed up, he composed and began performing “The Organ-Grinder Ditty.”

Translating “The Organ-Grinder Ditty”: A Couplet-by-Couplet Annotation

My goal in translating this poem-song was to accurately reflect the underlying Aesopian meaning while maintaining the formal metrical structure.

  • Шарманка-шарлатанка, как сладко ты поешь!
    Шарманка-шарлатанка, куда меня зовешь?
  • Oh, charlatan, street organ! Your singing is so sweet.
    You devious street organ! Where do you summon me?

The sweet (сладко) singing of the organ-grinder represents the temptations the Soviet government put before people aspiring to work in the arts. For the Russian word “звать” (to call), we chose a stronger word, “summon,” specifically implying the exercise of authority.

  • Шагаю еле-еле, – вершок за пять минут.
    Ну как дойти до цели, когда ботинки жмут?..
  • I trudge on, legs feel heavy, five minutes, just one inch.
    How can I reach my haven in boots that cramp and pinch?

The first line of this couplet alludes to the constraints placed on Okudzhava. In 1962, despite being a very popular bard, he had only been allowed to publish two tiny books of poetry—Lyrica, 63 pages, and Islands, 91 pages—and not a single record had been released. A вершок is an antiquated Russian unit of measurement just under 2 inches. Next, the image of painfully tight shoes is an obvious reference to the straitjacket of literary censorship (ботинки жмут). Цель (goal) is a polysemantic word. For a writer it could be to publish a novel, for a composer, to hear his new symphony in a concert hall, for Bulat, say, to see The Complete Poetry of Bulat Okudzhava in print. While “haven” and “goal” are not exact equivalents, given the constraints of meter, we felt this word fit with the underlying meaning: the ability to freely exercise his art was, for Okudzhava, a sort of haven, both a place of refuge and a desired goal.

  • Работа есть работа, работа есть всегда,
    Хватилo б только пота на все мои года.
  • What’s work? Just work I get. Jobs – plenty, good and bad.
    God, help me toil in blood-n-sweat through years that lay ahead.

As Nikolai Bogomolov, a professor at Moscow State University has observed: “Projecting the real situation in Russia onto this song, we see an obvious clash between the dulcet tones of the street-organ and social and political reality, and the only solution that crosses the minds of many people is that there is nothing left for them but work. Работа есть работа, работа есть всегда…” (In fact, work—as in paid work—was not always available, since when a writer was expelled from the Writers Union or other analogous professional organizations, he/she was deprived of any possibility of making a living in that field, as was the case with Boris Pasternak in 1958 and with Alexander Galich in 1971.)

Regarding the phrase “Хватилo б только пота…” in 1986, when asked how young writers and poets were able to establish themselves in the field of literature, Okudzhava replied: “One’s talent has to fight its way through sweat, blood and toil. And this is fair!” I assume that Okudzhava knew the Speech of Winston Churchill at the beginning of the war in May of 1940: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” We draw on this phrase in translating the second line of this couplet.

  • Расплата за ошибки – ведь это тоже труд.
    Хватило бы улыбки, когда под ребра бьют.
    Работа – есть работа…
  • A payback for my blunders – that’s also labor, but…
    Can I still smile, I wonder, when punched straight in the gut
    What’s work? Just work I get…

Of course, as for “ошибки/blunders,” we have to acknowledge the note of irony: Okudzhava’s uncompromising stances vis-à-vis the behavior expected from Soviet writers were blunders from their point of view, but not his own, of course. Being forced to openly admit “blunders” was worse than hard physical labor for many.

The last line, “Хватило бы улыбки, когда под ребра бьют”, reflects a slight exaggeration in regard to the Khrushchev era. Although Stalin’s torture and merciless executions of the most talented people of all persuasions and professions, including writers, were over, the persecution and harassment of dissenting writers under Nikita Khrushchev (and later Brezhnev) continued.

Alas, throughout Russian history, punches in the gut, whether literal or figurative, have been a fact of life for centuries.

Vladimir Kovner is an engineer, journalist, and English<>Russian translator and editor specializing in poetry, bard songs, ballet, and idioms. He participated in the edition «Песни Русских Бардов» (The Songs of Russian Bards, Paris, 1976), a collection comprising four volumes and 40 cassette tapes, and has published two books of poetic translation from English into Russian: «Приласкайте Льва» (Pet the Lion; 2010), and a bilingual edition titled Edward Lear: The Complete Limericks with Lear’s Own Drawings (2015). He also translated (in collaboration with Nora Seligman Favorov), Sergey Baimukhametov’s Magic Dreams: Confessions of Drug Addicts. His memoirs, «Золотой век Магнитиздата» (The Golden Age of “Magnitizdat,” were published in the United States, Russia and Germany. He enjoyed a long-term collaboration with Lydia Razran Stone. They made several joint presentations at ATA Annual Conferences and together wrote the “Idiom Savants” column in SlavFile. They jointly authored an article about translating Edward Lear in the Moscow journal «Мосты» (Bridges; 2012), a bilingual edition of the journal Чтения/Readings devoted to Okudzhava (2015), and Sports Idioms: English-Russian and Russian-English Dictionaries (2017). He can be reached at 19vovakova02@gmail.com.

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Translation by Interpreters and Interpreting by Translators

There is an ongoing debate in the language industry whether translation and interpreting services can be rendered by the same person. Needless to say, while these two services are related, the primary responsibilities and skills that a person needs to provide translation or interpreting services differ.

Meanwhile, many people who are not too familiar with linguistic services think that translation and interpreting are the same trade. Linguistically, this is well illustrated in Russian-speaking countries, where “переводчик” means both translator and interpreter. From the customer perspective, “переводчик” deals with different languages, either working on the written text or providing an oral rendition. In this aspect, the two trades are the same.

The International Standard ISO 17100 “Translation services — Requirements for translation services” does not restrict whether a translator can also handle interpreting assignments. It only mentions that a professional translator shall have competencies, including linguistic and textual, in both the source and target languages.[i]

Someone who professionally translates from one language into another accepts an ethical and professional duty to represent their qualifications, capabilities and responsibilities honestly and always work within them. Being truthful in advertising applies to professional translators and interpreters: our resumes, websites, brochures, business cards, manner, and non-verbal emotional tone all must accurately reflect who we are and what we can actually do, both practically and professionally.[ii]

Following that logic, a translator must decline, say, a request to help their client with over-the-phone interpreting of a conversation with a draft contract’s other party. Likewise, an interpreter has to decline a proposal to translate pitch decks used at a conference where this interpreter is engaged, despite being immersed in the event’s context and thus knowing these particular pitch decks’ content well.

To a certain extent, I agree with that. As a freelance translator, I have to decline an assignment that I cannot properly perform when it is beyond my qualifications. And what about those assignments that are within the scope of my abilities, even though I was never professionally trained and qualified in that area? Is it still a good idea to miss out on a lucrative interpreting or translation assignment then?

At this point, I have to quote Corinne McKay, an ATA-certified French-to-English translator and former ATA president: “When you work full-time for an employer, you have one job title. When you work for yourself, you’re not only the translator but also the department head for sales and marketing, technical support, customer relations, accounting and facilities maintenance. Unless you’re willing and able to pay someone to do these tasks for you, you’ll be doing them yourself, in addition to your regular job.”[iii]

To run a successful business, freelancers therefore do not have to miss a business opportunity if they feel up to the task. And if we look at it that way, why not try out both translating and interpreting even if you are not yet qualified in the twin trades?

In this regard, I believe that besides developing a specialization in a particular field, it is essential to find a niche in which offering a specific service really makes a freelance translator or interpreter stand out.

In his recent article “Does the jack of all trades still get the short end of the stick?”, the current editor of The NAJIT Observer, Jules Lapprand, stated, “Translators and interpreters have a superficial knowledge of almost any topic, and unless they have extensive experience in another profession, deep knowledge of only one: language. This reality was difficult for me to accept initially.” This quote resonated with me as I think translators and interpreters need not be afraid of gaining the “jack of all trades (and master of none)” moniker if they are trying out a new area of specialization. As a matter of fact, we have to be interested in new topics, master new areas, and find niches to stand out in. Otherwise, our overall marketing and messaging will more likely speak to no one. Courtroom interpreting with its “structured legalese and its own language that does not change as quickly as the latest fads do in other areas”[iv] is an excellent example of interpreter’s specialization. In other words, offering legal translation and court interpreting services at any time can be a niche.

Since we have a profound knowledge of language, we should be using that to its full extent, not limiting ourselves to one of the twin trades of translation or interpretation.

Today, however, it is rare for a freelancer to be both a translator and an interpreter.

In a truly inspiring Troublesome Terps podcast episode #63,[v] high-profile conference interpreters Louise Jarvis, Monika Ott and Sybelle van Hal-Bok, three members of three very different networks admitted that they often do translations as well when the existing clients ask for it. It should be noted, however, that translation is only a small part of their businesses; they still focus primarily on conference interpreting.

In this context, I would suggest that not only are different skills required to render translation or interpreting services, but our psychological make-up is also important. The existing stereotype is that translators are usually introverts with a tendency toward being quiet and reserved. Interpreters, however, are more often extroverted in nature. In addition, we are all human. Like everyone else, translators and interpreters tend to fear failure in an area where they feel less confident. For this reason, when it comes to deciding between staying in your comfort zone or handling a twin trade assignment, language professionals would rather remain in their comfort zone (i.e., decline a twin trade assignment), no matter how lucrative it is.

When the language service is provided by a company, it is usually never asked whether translation and interpreting can both be offered, but when it comes to a freelancer working with end clients, it can oftentimes be that the end client likewise expects the contracted translator to interpret.

For example, I was recently interpreting for a client, a law firm partner, who had a phone conversation with the Legal 500 Rankings researcher to find out how to send a law firm submission. As soon as the client found out that he had to fill out the multi-page submission templates, he asked me to translate the templates into his language. Did I decline that offer? Of course not! This is just one scenario where an interpreter can and, I think, should also perform as a translator. Let’s take a closer look at other scenarios.

In my legal translation practice, I have often been asked to render interpreting services when the end client needs to expeditiously negotiate contract details or urgently talk to a counterparty who does not have access to the Internet and therefore is unable to quickly respond to an e-mail. Notably, the client rightly assumes that I am already immersed in the upcoming deal’s details as I have been drafting or translating the contract for some time now. In that scenario, I provide interpreting services.

Vice versa, clients may forward me audio messages asking me to let them know the messages’ content in writing in a meeting, which is why they can’t talk. With such requests, I translate, even though the source content is in audio form.

Another classic example of assignments at the juncture of the two twin trades is on-the-spot translation, which occurs when I am asked to orally render a written legal paper’s content. This is quite specific to business meetings and court sessions where the client has not had a chance to quickly find a translator and instead asks the interpreter for a sight translation. In that scenario, I translate. There is all the more reason for this as the Russian law does not yet provide for sworn interpreter status, so the Russian courts do not require a separate certification for court interpreting. In short, by primarily focusing on legal translation, I do not need to sub-contract court interpreting assignments. This strategy has proven beneficial by allowing me to retain existing clients and catch new business opportunities.

To summarize, provided that both the client and freelancer are happy, I think freelancers offering both translation and interpreting services, even those who were never professionally trained and qualified in the twin trades, are still legitimate.

Notes

[i] ISO 17100:2015(E), paragraph 3.3.

[ii] American Translators Association Code of Ethics and Professional Practice, 3rd tenet: https://www.atanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/code_of_ethics_commentary.pdf

[iii] Introduction to the book “How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator” by Corinne McKay. First Edition. 2006

[iv] “Does the jack of all trades still get the short end of the stick?” by Jules Lapprand. July 30, 2021

https://najit.org/does-the-jack-of-all-trades-still-get-the-short-end-of-the-stick/?unapproved=106974&moderation-hash=310e754a47eb598a50c8c69fb18c6b8e#comment-106974

[v] Troublesome Terps, a roundtable-style podcast covering topics from the interpreting space and the wider world of languages; episode # 63 of July 21, 2021: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/troublesome-terps/63-interpreters-assemble-8TwuQZeFCaR/

Author bio

Dmitry Beschetny is an English>Russian translator and interpreter specializing in legal translation and court interpreting, based in Moscow. He holds a master’s degree in law and a master’s degree in humanities and social sciences, also having an academic qualification in translation studies.

Dmitry has extensive experience in criminal investigation and public prosecution. He has also worked as an in-house lawyer, and a legal counsel with law firms before turning his previous career into his area of specialization in the T&I industry. He has been translating and interpreting for academia, law firms and private clients. Dmitry can be reached at db@legalxlator.com. 

 

 

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

Localizing digital products into Russian: what is it like?


Photo by Christopher Gower on Unsplash

What is localization?

There are a few definitions out there. The course on Internationalization and Localization offered by the University of Washington (UWashingtonX) defines localization as “adaptation of digital content for a specific foreign market.” According to Nataly Kelly, who leads localization at HubSpot and has a great blog on this topic, “localization means adapting a digital experience for users who speak other languages or live in other countries.”

Localization is required when software products, websites, e-commerce and e-learning platforms, or mobile apps are made available to new markets.

In very basic terms, the localized digital product needs to:

  • cater to market needs
  • target a specific group of users
  • connect with users emotionally
  • be culturally appropriate
  • be easy to navigate

What do localization projects involve?

Localizability work often comes before localization to ensure that the process is as smooth as can be. This involves, among other things, transferring strings that need translation into a standalone file, separating text from images, making provisions for text expansion, and using placeholders.

Then comes the time for localizing both the content and the user interface (UI), making it accessible to users in the new market. Translation is usually sufficient for the more straightforward content, whereas UI, taglines, headings, call-to-action (CTA) buttons, and images might require a more creative approach to ensure that the product resonates with users.

What to look out for when localizing into Russian?

1. Level of formality. When starting a localization project from scratch, it’s important to determine how to address users, formally or informally, using «вы» or «ты». This is often decided by the client or together with the client. In fact, the same product might have different levels of formality between different languages: it might address users as “vous” in French, “du” in German, and «вы» in Russian.

A word of caution: it is often easier to start off with «вы» and use it throughout the project. This would cover the app content and all the system messages, as well as the inevitable privacy or cookie policies. An informal tone of voice is definitely justified for some products, but there will come a time to localize messages like “Forgotten password?” or “Are you sure you want to delete your account?” and these look much better when phrased formally.

Another benefit of using a formal pronoun is that it eliminates the need for feminine/masculine endings. It also makes the product more inclusive. This was the case with a parenting app I helped localize: initially the client wanted to go with the informal «ты», but that would’ve meant addressing only the mothers and excluding dads, while the content was trying to achieve the exact opposite—making sure that the new moms received much-needed support and involved dads as early as possible, even before their child was born.

2. Character restrictions in the user interface. If the app is content-heavy and contains articles or blog posts, character restrictions aren’t usually an issue there. However, when it comes to the user interface, space is at a premium, especially as Russian tends to be 15% longer than English. Even though adaptive design allows for these changes, it’s a good idea to keep this limitation in mind and try to be as concise as possible to avoid the back-and-forth with developers later on, after the product is tested on different devices.

3. Variables and placeholders. Variables and placeholders replace numbers (%d), characters (%c), or strings (%s). One of the most problematic situations in Russian localization is when a variable replaces a number and is followed by a word, for example, %d results. This poses a problem in Russian, which has complex rules governing the endings of the words following numbers. Some localization platforms like Crowdin allow for this variation and have different tabs for entering word forms for “one,” “several,” and “many” with the groups of numbers already predefined, which makes the translator’s job so much easier. However, that’s not always the case.

When there isn’t a way to specify different word forms on the localization platform, the easiest way around this is to flip the phrase so that it displays «Результаты: 5» (Results: 5). This isn’t always the most elegant solution, but I have had to resort to it quite often, especially when working on localization projects via an agency, as you don’t usually have a direct line to the developers.

4. Strings reused in different locations. In both website and mobile app localization projects, strings are often reused on the assumption that the words can be moved around without it affecting their form or meaning. With Russian being an inflected language, this approach simply doesn’t work. It results in phrases like «Нашим отелям» (“To our hotels”) or «Райских направлений» (“Of paradise destinations”) in menus, which I recently spotted on a hotel’s website. This can easily ruin the first impression for the users, especially if a brand is targeting customers in the luxury segment.

It is also possible to have strings that are used in two locations and require different translations or even different approaches to translation. This was the case when I was localizing a website for a jewelry brand, which had a “Store finder” page. I had to translate city names for the drop-down menu, but when the same city name appeared in the store address, I wanted to keep it in English because a transliterated address in Cyrillic will not get you anywhere if you’re trying to locate a jewelry boutique in London or St. Tropez!

5. Ambiguous verb forms. This is not unique to Russian, but app interfaces can have buttons like “Enter” or “Submit.” These can be translated using an infinitive, «Ввести», or as an imperative, «Введите». This depends on the context, but what makes it even trickier is that this string can also be referenced in other strings, and it’s essential to be consistent.

6. Culturally relevant content. When localizing an app, it makes sense to minimize references to source-language culture that aren’t going to resonate with the target audience or might be distracting. An example I like to give is a blog article on pool safety for children in the same parenting app. Most Russians don’t have the luxury of owning a house with a backyard and a pool, so the original reference to the private pool wouldn’t have gone down very well. However, I rephrased the sentence to include inflatable pools that you can have on your dacha, this scenario being much more likely.

7. Context is important. Translation is unimaginable without context, and it is especially important for localizing app UI and creating a positive, intuitive and memorable user experience. When working on localization platforms, there usually is a string description, like “invalid_email_error,” which gives you an idea where and when the string appears. There’s also an option for developers to include a screenshot or for translators to request one if it’s not there.

This list of potential issues that can come up when working on localization projects into Russian is not exhaustive, of course, and there are other things to be aware of to ensure successful localization, some of which only surface at or after the testing stage.

What I’ve found is that localization is very much a team effort, and it’s essential to keep talking to everyone involved in the process—producers, developers, content managers, and translators working into other languages—as they often have excellent creative ideas and suggest great workarounds.

 

 

Yulia Tsybysheva is a Russian marketing translator based in the UK. She works with clients in the fashion, beauty, jewelry, and travel industries and specializes in web & app localization, as well as transcreation. Having worked on four large-scale app localization projects, she’s planning to transition into localization and has recently received a Professional Certificate in Internationalization and Localization from UWashingtonX.

 

Website – https://choiceofwords.co.uk/

LinkedIn – https://uk.linkedin.com/in/yuliatsybysheva

Twitter – @ruchoiceofwords

 

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

Human Rights Translation: An Interview with Lucy Gunderson

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

New Webinar: Challenges in Human Rights Translation

Promotional image for human rights translation webinar

Have you ever wondered about the field of human rights translation? There is no shortage of human-rights issues in the post-Soviet space, but breaking into this specialization may feel too daunting. Fortunately, with research, you can become confident in your translations. But where should you look?

Join fellow SLD member Lucy Gunderson to learn research techniques to track down terminology in a wide range of documents available to human rights translators. Lucy will also demonstrate how to use human rights documents originally written in English to energize translations and inspire word choices.⁣ Let this webinar be your window or even stepping stone into human rights translation!
⁣
This webinar will be presented in English with Russian examples.⁣
⁣
Cost: ATA members $45, non-members $60⁣
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Unable to attend live? Register now to receive a link to the on-demand recording after the live event!⁣

SLD Podcast: Episode 22 with Paula Arturo

The latest episode of the SLD podcast, Slovo, is now available! In this episode, host Maria Guzenko speaks with Paula Arturo, a lawyer-linguist and Associate Professor of Law. Paula talks about the challenges of legal translation and shares tips for translators who would like to specialize in it. In the second half of the interview, Maria and Paula discuss how language professionals can negotiate a fair contract with their clients.

Listen here, or anywhere you get your podcasts – Slovo is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

CEU Watch: Clinical Trials and Medical Documentation: Resources and Translation Strategies for New Translators by Carmen Cross

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought upheaval and uncertainty to our profession, it has also been an opportunity to catch up on continuing education. However, I will not be reviewing any recent webinars on weathering the crisis or pivoting to remote interpreting. Today, I’d like to turn to an unexpectedly topical video from the ProZ.com video library—a repository that features webinars previously broadcast on the website. Disclaimer: Other than being a paying member, I have no business relationship with ProZ.com.

The video I watched was Clinical Trials and Medical Documentation: Resources and Translation Strategies for New Translators presented by German- and Arabic-to-English medical translator Carmen Cross. The live session took place back in 2016, but I found the presentation relevant to anyone getting started in the field of clinical trials.

Trial Background, Standards, and Terminology

In the first section of the webinar, the instructor gave an overview of the types of documentation produced in a clinical trial. Documents that may need translation include informed consent forms, patient information sheets, and serious adverse event reports. In addition, the speaker shared what areas clinical trials focus on. Even though our first thought may be drugs, Ms. Cross pointed out that other things may also be studied, such as medical devices or diagnostic procedures. She then went over some commonly studies drugs and drug targets (molecular entities the drug binds to). Next, the webinar focused on some common types of studies, including diagnostic, epidemiological, pharmacokinetic, and pharmacodynamic, among others. Finally, we looked at the phases of a trial, examining the objectives, number of participants, and length of each phase.

The following part concerned international standards that govern clinical trials, such as the International Conference on Harmonisation’s Good Clinical Practice (ICH GCP) addendum or the World Medical Association’s (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki. Ms. Cross named a few regulatory authorities overseeing clinical trials, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK, or the Public Health Institute in Russia, and emphasized that study sponsors apply to these bodies for approval. The documents involved in the application process, for example an investigational new drug application (IND), may require translation. The presenter pointed out that the actual research gets outsourced to the contract research organizations (CROs), who are responsible for trial data, and they may be the entity that needs translation services.

Finally, the speaker drew our attention to some tricky terms in this field and shared several resources we might want to turn to in our research. To name a few, she discussed the difference between efficacy and effectiveness; clinical trial and clinical study; and subject and patient. Ms. Cross recommended PubMed, which allows you to search in a particular language, and ClinicalTrials.gov, which lets you search for the full official title of the study by its ID.

Takeaways

I appreciated that the speaker not only provided an overview of clinical trials but also pointed out what organizations may be looking for translations, what documents may require translation, and where to look for terminology. She also listed the top countries where clinical trials are conducted—Russia, Turkey, China, Brazil, India, South Korea, and Mexico. Her advice was actionable and tailored to translators.

An obvious drawback of this webinar is that it was recorded in 2016, so some of the standards and processes might have changed since. In fact, the speaker mentioned that a new clinical trial regulation (EU No 536/2014) had been adopted, supplanting an earlier European Union directive, but its implementation was going to be gradual. I would still recommend this webinar to anyone interested in clinical trials, with the caveat that the viewer will need to do their own research to find up-to-date information.

Author Bio

Maria Guzenko is an ATA-certified English<>Russian translator and a certified medical interpreter (CMI-Russian). She holds an MA in translation from Kent State University and specializes in healthcare translation. Maria is a co-founder of the SLD exam practice group and the host of the SLD podcast, now rebranded as Slovo. More information can be found on her website at https://intorussian.net.

CEU Watch: International Keyword Research for Translators from Meridian Linguistics

Taught by Sara Maria Hasbun

Reviewed by Anna Livermore

I love CPD. My inner nerd rejoices at the prospect of starting a new course or attending a professional event. Nowadays, there are infinite opportunities to learn. So much so that it can be hard to choose from a gazillion options that come in the shape of online courses, professional conferences, live webinars, mentoring sessions, books, podcasts, blogs…

The CPD I dedicate time to usually falls into four categories: acquiring a new skill relevant to my specialization, improving my technical knowledge (CAT or DTP tools), keeping up with trends in the industry I specialize in or learning better business practices. Even so, the choice of available CPD options can be overwhelming. What helps me stay focused is going back to my marketing plan and my business goals, then choosing CPD opportunities that can help me achieve them.

One of the courses I completed recently is International Keyword Research for Translators from Meridian Linguistics. It is a short online course that provides a step by step guide for translators on working with international keywords. I intentionally use ‘working with’ instead of ‘translating’ because translation is only a small part of the overall process.

What this course is:

Exactly what it says on the tin: a guide outlining every step of creating a keyword file for a client in your target language for the target market. You will find out what needs to be discussed before you start work, what tools are available (and useful) for different stages of the project, what those stages are, why simply translating keywords from the source language does not cut it, and what your final product should look like.

Despite being short, the course packs a lot of information. The best thing about it is the way it relates the best practices for keyword research to the language industry and to the linguist’s role in that process.

What this course is not:

This is not a course that will help you optimize your own webpage, although some aspects of it can be useful. On the whole, its focus is researching keywords for clients for target regions.

It will answer a lot of questions about keywords—types of keywords, where to find them, how to choose them, and how they relate to an overall SEO strategy—but it is not a replacement for general SEO courses.

Bottom line:

I highly recommend this course: the information in it is distilled to help improve the specific skill of working with international keywords. It is designed and delivered by people who over the years have developed professional expertise in the field. I have been working with SEO and multilingual keyword research for several years now and still took away a lot from this course, which will help me deliver even more value to my clients.

Anna Livermore is an English>Russian and German>Russian translator and former marketing specialist. With a linguistics degree from the Oxford Brookes University and a Professional Diploma in marketing, she came to specialize in translating marketing materials, corporate communications, website content and various components of SEM. She is a member of the Slavic Languages Division’s Social Media team. Contact: livermore.translations@gmail.com

Digging into the SlavFile Lite Archives (Part 1)

SlavFile Header

Lydia Razran Stone, who has been editing the SlavFile for over 25 years, has been digging into her archives. She figures we all could use some light reading in this time of lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders, and has picked out a few of her favorite columns (SlavFile Lite: Not by Word Count Alone) to share. We start off with a pair of columns from Spring and Summer 1999, and this will continue as a series of at least three posts (maybe more!).

Spring 1999

Over the Christmas holidays, we were visiting а neighborhood in Brooklyn that is рrоbаblу no more than 10-20% Russian. Nevertheless, when we left, we found а handbill stuck on the windshield of our саr from which I quote verbatim: «ЭКОНОМЬТЕ 50% НА СТОИМОСТИ ПОХОРОН! Новый закон дает Вам возможность экономить тысячи долларов в любом похоронном доме. Мы продаем гробы высшего качества прямо с завода-изготовителя.» Getting this particular handbill on our саr (not the one with the PEREVOD license plate, the other one) seemed an even more striking coincidence in light of the fact that I had just finished translating а роеm concerning the value, or lack thereof, of such а “bох mаdе of wood.” (See below.) It was all rather unnerving, since given that the coffin purveyors had the uncanny ability to know that we read Russian, perhaps they also had some supernatural advance knowledge that we would soon need such а bох. However, two months later I am happy to report, as we say in our family, quoting а joke concerning а man falling from а skyscraper, we are “All right, so far,” or in Russian, «Пока ничего!»

In Defense of Bloopers! Many of my colleagues, indeed some of mу best friends, decry the citation of amusing translation “bloopers” in professional language publications and the general media, fearing that such articles make us, as а profession, look incompetent and unprofessional. These colleagues assert that other more respected and self-respecting professions do not engage in this sort of self-deprecating behavior. Му outlook on this matter is diametrically opposed to theirs. То leave aside the issue of whether laughing at one’s self can ever bе unprofessional, to me the point made bу any catalogue of translation/interpretation bloopers is that translation is an extremely difficult, challenging, and ticklish enterprise fraught with pitfalls and that anyone needing translation/interpretation services had better make certain that they find someone experienced and competent. А recent article in the Washington Post took just such а tack, starting with а court interpreting blоореr: The article reported that when а lawyer asked а female witness if she had been embarrassed bу а certain incident, the interpreter instead asked her in Spanish if she had been impregnated bу it. Нег vehement denial caused some confusion in the courtroom until the mistranslation was sorted out. After this introduction, the article goes on to discuss the need for and establishment of an intensive court interpreter training program and ends with praise for the program from АТА President Muriel Jerome O’Keefe.

In this spirit I would like to cite а few of the funniest bloopers I encountered when I was editing Russian translations of articles written bу NASA personnel for а book published jointly bу U.S. and Soviet scientists. These mistakes, I learned, are more indicative of the inadequate reference materials provided to the Russian translators, than of any lack of competence or training on their part. In addition, every once in а while, NASA engineers express themselves in terms that are somewhat less than perfectly clear and straightforward. Take the word “commode.” This term, which I have always taken to bе а hyperdecorous middle American euphemism, is the word the engineers use to refer to the toilet on spacecraft. No wonder the perplexed Russian translators came up with the translation of шкаф, leading to the statement that contamination bу fecal bacteria was, of course, most likely in the area around the bookshelf. In another, somewhat less explainable instance, the meaning of the word “shift”, as а sleeveless undergarment, was selected over а seemingly much more salient meaning, so that the corridors of а space station were characterized as most congested, not during change of work shifts, but, instead, during periods when the astronauts changed their underwear. More understandably but no more accurately, one of the attendees at а conference devoted to toxicology was listed as а representative of the Министерство внутренних болезней США [(“US Ministry of Internal Diseases”)], when he was actually, а representative of the Department of the Interior. As for my own translations of Russian chapters for this book, it goes without saying that they were perfect and contained no bloopers amusing or otherwise. However, I did have some trouble explaining to the author of the chapter on cosmonaut nutrition why I persisted in translating вобла simply as dried fish when he had repeatedly sent me the exact Latin name of the fish species involved. I was finally аblе to make clear to him that what was lost in explicitness was more than compensated for bу forestalling the English speaker’s most likely understanding of what sort of а critter а Caspian roach was likely to bе.

In my last column I wrote about my translation of “The Cherry Orchard,” which was refined during rehearsals with an American director and а young American cast. In general, the director and I got along beautifully. Being а stickler for details and authenticity herself (Sharlotta even had а live dog), she rarely objected when I told her something needed to bе changed. There were, however, two points of production оn which she fought me tooth and nail, insisting that she had seen things dоnе her way in more than опе highly acclaimed professional U.S. production. Finally I had to bring in а visitor from Russia to support my point of view. What were the two aspects of the production that Rоbin, the director, objected so vehemently to changing? The first was that in Act I, I balked at having the characters obtain coffee from а samovar; the second, in Act IV, that I would nоt allow the mеn to return from the auction (repeatedly described as occurring on August 22) wearing fur hats, nо matter how cold Americans believe it is in Russia.

Звери уходят от нас перед смертью –

И правы.

Травы стоят до последнего ветра

И правы.

Мертвые чайки не ждут

Деревянной оправы.

Море колышет их перья

В разводах мазута.

Стертой монеткой мы купим

Забытое право:

Медленно выйти на берег

И ждать переправы –

С легкой душой,

Не печалясь о смене маршрута.

И. Ратушинская

 

Beasts will run off far from man when they sense they must go.

So they should!

Rushes stand upright until the last wind lays them low.

So they should!

Gulls do not fret when their deaths don’t include

А bох made of wood.

Waves еbb and flow through the feathers that float

ln an oil slick of crude!

With well polished coins we will purchase

А forgotten good—

Freedom to wait on the shore for the boat

ln an unhurried mood.

We will wait for the ferry unworried

Ву changes in route.

Translated by L. Stone

 

Summer 1999

Му mother has been visiting me. The other evening, after listening to my husband and me discussing the details of the mailbох made to look like Ваbа Yaga’s hut he is making me for my birthday, she said to me, “I keep waiting for you to outgrow your ‘Russian phase.”‘ I estimate she has been waiting somewhere between 35 and 40 years. I thought she sounded rather wistful.

I am visited bу recurrent metaphors for the activities and phenomena that are important to me. For example, doing а relatively straightforward general translation or а technical translation in а familiar area tends to remind me of cross-country skiing. There I am whizzing along, and suddenly I see some danger оr obstacle in the path, an exposed tree root for example; one second I am thinking to myself, “Gee, I wonder how I am going get myself past that onе.” And often, if I am lucky, the next second I suddenly realize that I am past it. On the other hand, when I encounter onе of those Russian sentences that саn only bе translated bу laborious disassembly and then reassembly in English I see myself as а do-it-yourselfer who has just taken apart and then put back together an alarm clock and is just about to congratulate herself for a job well-done when she notices а small but significant pile of leftover gears and the like sitting оn the work tаblе.

When I am translating from Russian to English, I see the English language as an enormous hardware store that carries аbsolutely anything anybody would ever want or need, (as well as some things not in this category) but is extremely disorganized. Тhе good translator, then, is а kind of old geezer salesclerk whо hаs been working in the store for decades and is the only person who can immediately put his hands on the exact gizmo that someone needs for а repair or project. On the other hand, when I hаvе to produce anything more than thе most banal sentence in Russian, I see that language as а kind of elegant foreign children’s tinker toy or thе like ( оnlу purchasable, no doubt, for а great deal of money at high-еnd toy stores). Even small children from thе country of this toy’s manufacture are аblе to assemble its brightly colored parts into graceful and elaborate structures. But whenever I, а foreigner who came to this game too late, make an attempt, the pieces just come apart in my hands or at best, with great effort I am аblе to put together а misshapen and unattractive construction.

Оn the subject of distortion, if the Brightonisms I cited in last month’s column can indeed bе considered linguistic distortions, I bent some of them even further out of shаре; юзданый should have been юзаный and фудстэмпчик should have been фудстэмпщик (in other words, not а dear little food stamp, but someone whо uses or relies on the same). SLD member Natalia Geilman of Richfield, Minnesota clearly finds such bilingual neologisms deplorable. She writes, “The article you wrote in the last issue of Slavfile literally ‘задела меня за живое’! lt’s so frustrating to hear that terrible mixture, Ruslish, which so many immigrants speak nowadays. I am strongly convinced that the proportion of “Russified” English words increases with the decrease of knowledge of either language. People who do speak English do not try to impress others with that terrible lingo. Неrе are some gems, frequently used in Minnesota Russian speaking community: апплаивать (на субсидированную квapтиру, бенефиты, вэлфер и т.д.), юзаные (не “юзданые”) машины, либо кары, драйвер, нюрс (nurse) – и, конечно, аппойнтмент.” See also the article in this issue written bу Ewa Godlewska for а somewhat less negative discussion of the analogous phenomenon in the speech of the Polish community of Chicago.

As for me, I tend to see а large dollop of creativity in this phenomenon. Just as the child who says “I goed” is demonstrating а more profound and rule-governed attempt to master English than onе who simply repeats “I went,” the immigrants (ignorant of syntactic niceties as they may bе) who coin some Ruslish phrase seem to те to bе embodying а creative principle in human thought: the attempt at all costs to endow the environment with meaning. (Yes, I tend to find some grafitti creative too, although I realize I might well feel differently if it were my property serving as the canvas.) I see this phenomenon in action in the family of my friend Liana where I visit frequently. Her oldest daughter Irada is the main practitioner. In full command of bоth languages, shе mixes and adapts them either as а form of punning, to import а nuance from one language to another, or to imply when speaking Russian that she is referring to аn intrinsically American phenomenon. In one of ту favorite uses, she declines the English verb “to miss” in Russian, saying, when her mother is away, “мис(с)ую.” Тhе beauty of it is that the grammatically regular though semantically barbarous Russian phrase is homonymous with the English phrase with the same meaning, “I miss you.” Another of my favorite words used in this family is “бебичный,” meaning, of course, childish.

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