ATA SLD

Slavic Languages Division (American Translators Association)

American Translators Association: The Voice of Interpreters and Translators

Last Few Readers Needed for Galantière Award

Please note: this is a volunteer opportunity open only to ATA members.
The ATA Honors & Awards Committee is seeking volunteer readers for the Galantière Award. The list is close to 100% filled, which is amazing considering the number of books (53), but they would like to have at least two readers per book, and the following currently have only one reader:

Russian: March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 4 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (historical fiction)
Russian: People and Trees: A Trilogy by Akram Aylisli (literary fiction, 3 novellas)
Ukrainian: Set Change by Yuri Andrukhovych (poetry)

The sign-up sheet is here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F4EA8AD28A4FEC70-62507289-2026#/.
You can access information about all the books by clicking on “click here” at the top of the sign-up sheet.
For longer works, it’s possible to review the book based on a shorter selection without reading the entire thing. For more information, see the call for readers here.

Call for Galantière Award Volunteer Readers

Please note: this is a volunteer opportunity open only to ATA members.

The ATA’s Lewis Galantière Award is bestowed biennially for a distinguished book-length literary translation from any language (except German) into English. The Honors & Awards Committee is looking for ATA members to volunteer to read 3 or more of the nominated books and provide feedback to help choose a winner.

How it works:

The sign-up sheet is here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F4EA8AD28A4FEC70-62507289-2026#/. You can access information about all the books by clicking on “click here” at the top of the sign-up sheet. If you’d like to volunteer, please sign up for your books by March 23.

Each book will be read by 3 readers. Reader 1 must know the source language in order to compare the source text with the translation. Readers 2 and 3 do not have to know the source language (though it’s fine if they do). There are still several slots for Readers 1, 2 and 3 left unfilled, and Reader 1s are especially needed in the following languages: Bulgarian, Farsi, French, Italian, Latin, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

The English translations and excerpts from the source texts (10 pages) will be shared electronically in PDF form. Readers will receive the link to an online evaluation form to fill out by April 30.

Please note:

  • If your own work has been nominated for this award, we ask that you do not sign up to be a reader.
  • If you are personal friends with any of the translators nominated, we ask that you do not sign up as a reader of their translations, but feel free to sign up as a reader for other translations.
  • This volunteer opportunity is open only to ATA members, so please do not share it with anyone who is not an ATA member.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact the Honors & Awards Committee at honors_awards@atanet.org

Oxford Translates: Online Literary Translation Workshop (including Russian)

Oxford Translates

An online literary translation summer school

July 6-10, 2026

Oxford Translates is an online literary translation summer school aimed at language enthusiasts and practicing translators at any stage of their career who want to explore the world of literary translation. It is open to participants anywhere in the world.

The summer school runs for 5 days. Participants work in small groups with award-winning and leading professional translators to hone their translation practice over 3 days.

In 2026, workshops are running into English from 11 languages – Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Urdu – plus there is a multilanguage workshop for translators working in any other language. There are four workshops out of English into the following languages: French, German, Italian and Spanish.

We are delighted to have Anna Gunin leading our Russian-English workshop. Anna Gunin is a translator of novels and memoirs, films and folk tales, plays and poetry. She co-translated Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer (Penguin Modern Classics), lauded in the TLS as a ‘masterly new translation’ that ‘retains the nerve and pulse of the Russian’. Anna has taught at City University, London, and the University of Bristol, as well as leading workshops at the British Library, Translate at City and Bristol Translates.

The other 2 days are filled with panels on industry trends, job readiness and workshops on particular themes or genres. Participants have the unique and exciting opportunity to practise pitching in a one-to-one session with a publisher or editor.

Scholarships are available to UK residents on a low income and residents of India applying for the Urdu translation workshop. The deadline for scholarship applications is March 16, 2026. 

An early-bird rate is available for those who apply by March 31. Workshops are limited to a maximum of 12 people and places are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Apply early to secure your place.

For more information and to apply, click here. Contact us: translates@seh.ox.ac.uk

Interview with Dynamo Award Recipient Jamila del Mistro

Jamila Del Mistro

Every two years, ATA presents the Dynamo Award to “a person or entity that has worked in a particularly energetic way to benefit ATA and/or the language professions.” In 2025, the award went to Slavic Languages Division member Jamila del Mistro. Shelley Fairweather-Vega sat down virtually with Jamila to talk about her award, her work, and her plans.

Jamila, congratulations on your 2025 Dynamo Award! We’re proud that a Slavic Languages Division member has been recognized by ATA. Could you start by telling us a little about your language career so far, and what it means to you to receive the Dynamo Award?

Thank you! My language journey began early. I was born and spent the first 25 years of my life in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan. I grew up bilingual, speaking Azerbaijani at home and Russian at school, attending Russian preschool, and completing my entire secondary education in Russian. As a result, I developed native-level fluency in both languages.

I began learning English in fourth grade and grew up surrounded by it. My mother is a high-school English teacher who tutored students at home, so I often listened to English grammar lessons in our living room. Later, I attended a private university in Baku where many courses were taught in English.

At 19, I began working at an international oil consortium where English was the primary working language. At 21, I joined a USAID-funded nonprofit operated by the American Bar Association. Four years later, I was accepted into the LL.M. program at the University of San Diego School of Law. I moved to the United States for graduate studies and chose to remain, further strengthening my linguistic foundation. Building my life here, including marrying my husband, who is a native English speaker, deepened both my sense of belonging and my fluency through daily immersion.

I encountered Turkish in my twenties through friends, and my interest in it continued after I moved to the United States, where I formed close friendships within the Turkish community. I initially developed my Turkish informally and later began formal coursework in 2022. I continue to study the language and actively refine my interpretation skills. I am fortunate to work with an excellent teacher, a graduate of the interpretation program at the prestigious Boğaziçi University, and her mentorship has been invaluable in strengthening my professional competence.

Turkish and Azerbaijani both belong to the Turkic language family and have many linguistic similarities. At the same time, they contain numerous false cognates, which require careful attention and precision—particularly in interpretation.

Each language I’ve learned has expanded my worldview and shaped my approach to cross-cultural communication.

Receiving the Dynamo Award is a tremendous honor. It affirms years of dedication to multilingual work and highlights the meaningful impact interpreters and translators have in connecting communities.

With that mix of languages, you are one of a handful of SLD members who work with languages that are not, in fact, Slavic. How do you handle switching back and forth between Russian, English, and Turkish and Azerbaijani, which are very different languages?

Growing up in Baku, a multicultural city with a longstanding tradition of peaceful coexistence among ethnicities and religions, I was constantly surrounded by linguistic diversity. That environment naturally trained me to switch between languages and cultural frameworks with ease.

Today, I continue to nurture that flexibility by maintaining friendships across cultures, traveling, and immersing myself in history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and languages. This curiosity keeps my linguistic instincts sharp and adaptable in professional settings.

What are the biggest challenges and greatest rewards of working with a less-spoken language like Azerbaijani?

Working with Azerbaijani brings both challenges and deep rewards. Finding qualified partners for simultaneous interpretation can be difficult due to the small pool of certified Azerbaijani interpreters, and because there is limited demand, it means I need to diversify into other languages to maintain consistent work.

On the positive side, I serve as a vital bridge, helping individuals access justice, healthcare, education, and essential services. There is a profound sense of purpose in knowing that my skills fill a critical gap and that, in some situations, I may be one of very few professionals able to provide accurate interpretation.

During my work as an immigration court interpreter, I witnessed firsthand what the absence of a qualified interpreter can mean for a detained immigrant awaiting a hearing. Without an interpreter in the appropriate language pair, a person’s case may be postponed indefinitely, prolonging detention simply because language access is unavailable.

Another challenge I see as an Azerbaijani interpreter is the existence of two main dialect groups used by Azerbaijani speakers in the United States: Northern and Southern. Northern Azerbaijani is primarily spoken in Baku, Azerbaijan, while Southern Azerbaijani is widely spoken by Azerbaijanis from Tabriz and other regions of Iran. These two varieties differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, and linguistic influences—for example, Southern Azerbaijani contains more Persian loanwords, while Northern Azerbaijani has been influenced by Russian.

Sometimes LEP speakers from Baku are assigned an interpreter who was born and raised in Tabriz. In such situations, dialect differences may lead to misunderstandings or inaccurate interpretation. The LEP may report that they cannot fully understand the interpreter, which can result in the interpreter being released by the court and the hearing being postponed.

Experiences like these reinforce the gravity and responsibility of our profession. Working with a less-spoken language requires resilience, but it also brings a powerful sense of responsibility and impact.

What are your top tips for keeping your interpreting skills sharp in multiple languages and modalities?

Consistency is essential. I recommend shadowing news or podcasts to improve pronunciation, practicing sight translation, accepting translation assignments regularly, and rehearsing consecutive and simultaneous interpretation with recorded speeches. Building thematic glossaries, recording and reviewing your work, and staying immersed through daily reading and listening are also crucial.

Even 20–30 minutes per language each day can help maintain fluency and agility.

What do you like to do when you’re not interpreting or translating?

When I’m not interpreting or translating, I enjoy a full and joyful life centered around my family. I’m the mother of two wonderful, bright, and talented children, and being present in their lives is my greatest priority. I have read to them since they were three months old because instilling a love of books has always been important to me. Today, they both read above grade level, and my daughter recently became the Spelling Bee Champion of her school district.

I also volunteer at their schools and teach my daughter Russian, as she is eager to learn the language and hopes to visit Russia one day. Every Saturday morning, I hike with my husband, Guy. We enjoy family movie nights, cooking and baking together, playing with our two kittens, reading in multiple languages, playing board games, and making music.

True to my profession, I also have a playful habit of guessing languages based on accents and sometimes guessing someone’s ethnicity based on physiological features. It’s a natural extension of my curiosity about linguistics and human diversity.

What’s next for you professionally? Any big plans or goals?

I currently serve as the president of ATISDA, an ATA affiliate in San Diego, and one of my primary goals is to grow our membership to 100 and to establish a consistent yearly calendar of events. I believe strong professional communities create stronger interpreters and translators, and I am committed to building a vibrant, supportive network at the local level.

Together with my colleague Shelley Fairweather-Vega, I also plan to launch a Turkic Languages Special Interest Group. My vision is to create a space where professionals working in Turkic languages can connect, share resources, mentor one another, and elevate the visibility of our languages within the broader industry.

On a personal level, I plan to continue advancing my credentials by taking and passing the Written Exam for Court Interpreters and the abbreviated NCSC exam for Turkish. Lifelong learning and professional growth remain central to my career.

Equally important to me is mentoring the next generation of interpreters—helping them not only refine their craft, but also build sustainable, confident, and financially successful careers. I believe that when we lift others, we strengthen the profession.

Jamila Del Mistro is a licensed court interpreter in the United States working in the following language combinations: Russian–English, Azerbaijani–English, and Turkish–English, and vice versa. Jamila currently serves as the president of a local ATA affiliate in San Diego called ATISDA. You can connect with Jamila on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamila-del-mistro-b233ab12/ 

Shelley Fairweather-Vega (CT) translates from Russian and Uzbek to English, specializing in literature from Central Asia. She is a past administrator of the ATA Literary Division. Find her online at fairvega.com.

Robert Chandler at ATA66: Changing Attitudes to Translating from Russian

Session Review: (067) Changing Attitudes to Translating from Russian, presented by SLD Distinguished Speaker Robert Chandler on Friday, October 24, at ATA66

Review by Trace Dreyer

The art of tact, Robert Chandler argued in his first talk as Distinguished Speaker, is at the heart of translation, not choosing sides in theoretical debates. Drawing on examples from Constance Garnett’s groundbreaking work and the collaborative methods of Samuel Koteliansky, Chandler dismantled the false dichotomies that have long constrained translation theory: literal versus free, foreignization versus domestication, transparency versus opacity. Instead, he proposed that great translators must develop the sensitivity to know when each approach serves the text, negotiating meaning through dialogue rather than dogma. His message, delivered through historical examples and practical wisdom, challenges translators to abandon rigid ideologies in favor of something more demanding: the passionate commitment to bringing literature to life for new readers, whatever tactical choices that requires.

Getting down to brass tacks

Robert Chandler galvanized the room by opening with a poignant rendition of Maria Remizova’s searing poem “The House that Jack Wrecked,” translated powerfully by Dmitri Manin and published in the Smokestack Books anthology of Russian poetry Disbelief: 100 Russian Anti-War Poems (see below). This drove home the approach he would go on to advocate: grounding translation in tact, sensitivity, and communicating meaning.

Shining a light through the window of translation

Chandler brought theory to life by tracing the historical roots of translation philosophy back to the earliest Bible translations, identifying two fundamental approaches that continue to shape the field today. He likened these to the architectural differences between Protestant and Catholic churches: The windows in Protestant churches offer transparency, allowing light to stream through clearly, while the rich colors in Catholic churches’ stained-glass windows nuance the light even as they reduce its intensity. Both approaches have merit; the transparent translation gives readers the sensation of accessing something deep and complex directly, while the more ornate approach may sacrifice some clarity to preserve the distinctive character of the original language. Chandler suggested that the most successful translations transcend this binary.

Honoring Constance Garnett

Chandler began by shedding light on the success of Constance Garnett’s early-twentieth-century translations of Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and others, despite harsh criticism by those who hold fast to dichotomies.

Chandler reminded his audience that this courageous and independent woman accomplished something remarkable: Garnett’s translations successfully enabled English-speaking readers to sense the greatness of those Russian writers for the first time. Her work profoundly influenced Arnold Bennett, D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and other great writers.

What made Garnett’s work successful, Chandler argued, was her tact, that is, her ability to look beyond rigid adherence to structure, grammar, and literal meaning to capture something more essential. In her translation of Chekhov, for instance, she preserved his characteristic indefiniteness, his contradictions, his loose ends. She understood that Chekhov’s genius lay partly in what he left unresolved.

The Collaborative Model: Samuel Koteliansky

Chandler also highlighted Samuel Koteliansky, whose approach was, crucially, collaborative and oral. He would read translations aloud with literary partners, D.H. Lawrence and both Leonard and Virginia Woolf, discussing and negotiating where the meaning was to be found, not just in individual words, but in tone and rhythm. This method of reading aloud and negotiating meaning offers a model for how translators might work: not in isolation, following rigid principles, but in dialogue, seeking the living spirit of the text.

Practical Wisdom

Chandler insightfully recommended that translators examine other translations into English, even translations from languages other than Russian, before beginning their own work, not to copy but to discover good ideas and solutions to common problems. This approach requires humility, a willingness to learn from predecessors rather than simply dismissing them.

He invoked the translators of the King James Bible, who “sought the truth not their own gain” and recognized the importance of not rushing their work or coveting praise. Their example reminds us that translation is ultimately a service to the author, to the text, and to readers in the target language.

Bringing Life to Translation

The session’s through-line was clear: rigid ideologies—whether favoring literal fidelity or creative adaptation, foreignization or domestication, meter or meaning—can interfere with the translator’s essential task. That task is not to demonstrate theoretical consistency or to showcase one’s own linguistic cleverness, but to bring the original text to life in a new language.

For translators of Russian literature, especially those working in today’s complex cultural and political landscape, Chandler’s message is challenging and liberating as well. Let’s develop our tact: the sensitivity to know when transparency serves the text and when a touch of strangeness is needed, when to preserve ambiguity and when to clarify, when to follow the letter and when to pursue the spirit.

Translation is not about following rules. It is about negotiation, sacrifice, and above all, the passionate commitment to bringing the text to life for those who are unable to read the original. As Constance Garnett demonstrated over a century ago, when done with tact and dedication, translation can change literary history itself.

Robert Chandler is a distinguished translator of Russian literature, whose translations include works by Pushkin, Akhmatova, and Vasily Grossman, among others.

Tracy Philip Dreyer is a professional translator and interpreter with over 25 years of experience with international agencies, government entities, and non-governmental organizations working in human rights, environment, development, and others. He is highly proficient in translation, as well as simultaneous and consecutive interpreting, and has proven familiarity with the institutional languages of UNDP, FAO, ILO, the World Bank, and other multilateral agencies. L1 English, L1 Spanish, L2 French, L3 Portuguese. Since 2020, he has been the Translation Coordinator with Signify Translation in El Salvador, Central America, where he lives and works.

The House that Jack Wrecked

Maria Remizova

This is the house

that Jack wrecked.

And these are the tenants who went to hide

In the dark basement and so survived

In the house

that Jack wrecked.

 

This is the merry titmouse

That flies no longer about the house,

The house

that Jack wrecked.

This is the cat

That cowers and whimpers and doesn’t get

What’s going on with the bombs and all that

In the house

That Jack wrecked.

 

This is the tailless dog,

Toothless, gutless, beheaded, declawed.

Maybe up in heaven it will meet God

In the house

That Jack wrecked.

 

This is the cow with the crumpled horn,

Mooing, its udder tattered and torn,

Dripping blood and milk in the morn

On the road to the house

That Jack wrecked.

 

This is the old woman, sad and forlorn,

That can’t see the cow with the crumpled horn,

Can’t see the dead dog without tail and all that,

Can’t see the mewling, hysterical cat,

Can’t see the silent and motionless titmouse,

Can’t see the mess in the basement of the house,

The house

That Jack wrecked.

She clings to the steps in an odd embrace,

A meat fly crawling across her face.

translated by Dmitri Manin

 

Original:

Дом, который разрушил Джек

Мария Ремизова

 

Вот дом,

Который разрушил Джек.

А это те из жильцов, что остались,

Которые в темном подвале спасались

В доме,

Который разрушил Джек.

А это веселая птица-синица,

Которая больше не веселится.

В доме,

Который разрушил Джек.

Вот кот,

Который пугается взрывов и плачет,

И не понимает, что все это значит,

В доме,

Который разрушил Джек.

Вот пес без хвоста,

Без глаз, головы, живота и хребта.

Возможно, в раю он увидит Христа

В доме,

Который разрушил Джек.

А это корова безрогая,

Мычит и мычит, горемыка убогая.

И каплями кровь с молоком на дорогу

К дому,

Который разрушил Джек.

А это старушка, седая и строгая,

Старушка не видит корову безрогую,

Не видит убитого пса без хвоста,

Не видит орущего дико кота,

Не видит умолкшую птицу синицу,

Не видит того, что в подвале творится

В доме,

Который разрушил Джек.

Она как-то криво припала к крыльцу.

И муха ползет у нее по лицу.

How “And Other Stories” (translated by Michael Ishenko and Liv Bliss) Came To Be

How And Other Stories (translated by Michael Ishenko and Liv Bliss) Came To Be

Front and back cover of Michael Ishenko's "And Other Stories," translated by Liv Bliss

Front and back cover of Michael Ishenko’s “And Other Stories,” translated by Liv Bliss (Photo provided by Liv Bliss)

When asked to tell the readers of the SLD blog something about one of my favorite translation projects ever, I (Liv) realized that there wasn’t much I could say that hadn’t already been said in the book itself. Michael Ishenko, fellow ATA member, author, illustrator, book designer, and translation partner extraordinaire, agreed. So here, reproduced and lightly modified with his kind permission, is the book’s afterword, “About This Translation.” As idyllically unlikely as what follows may sound, I promise you that every word is true.

Any ATA member interested in receiving their very own AOS (no charge) need only send their mailing address to me at bliss.mst@gmail.com. Don’t be shy: I’ve got lots of copies.

Liv:

Author Michael Ishenko and I had been professional colleagues for quite some time when he began sending me chapters of his fictionalized autobiography И другие рассказы, just to read. For me, it was pretty much love at first sight. The honesty, the insight, the scope… The self-deprecating humor, the visual immediacy, the whimsy… The characters, the settings, the plot twists…

And I began nagging, insisting that what I was already calling And Other Stories couldn’t possibly go untranslated. He demurred, justifiably pointing out the pitfalls. There’s too much untranslatable subtext, he told me, having witnessed younger Beta readers of the Russian-language original scratching their heads over its Soviet-era realia and its cultural nuances. Endnotes abounded.

Michael:

I included a total of seventy-one (71!) endnotes in the Russian-language original. As I wrote, I kept sending finished stories to my then-twenty-one-year-old great-niece “for queries.” My answers to her questions actually made up the bulk of my cultural and historical notes. I hate notes in a book of fiction, but it was the best I could do to make things clear for the younger reader.

Liv Bliss blended all those notes into the English narrative gently, tactfully, and seamlessly. As a result, the reader will be pleased to find not a single endnote in this book.

Liv:

I normally try to rock as few boats as possible. Not this time. Unbeknownst to Michael, I started working on an episode from the book, planning to send him my translation and then hide under my desk for a week or two. And only days before I was ready to do that — his translation, of the same episode, arrived in my inbox. Clearly, this thing was meant to be.

Michael:

And when I compared those two translations, the choice of translator became obvious to me. If I had to write this book in English, I would be happy to accept this translation as my English original. But I couldn’t write it myself, so Liv did it for me.

Liv:

Having to adjust our intensive work on And Other Stories to the rest of our professional and private lives presented some challenges. Progress was at times slow, but it was always steady. Early in the process, Michael began compiling cheat-sheets, often with illustrations, to cover elements of the next chapter in line for translation that he thought I might have difficulty with. This was invaluable to me. And any mistakes I still insisted on making that happened to escape his sharp eyes were usually caught by Nathalie Stewart, a long-time colleague and friend of Michael’s who gave each chapter a close reading and found things that had eluded us both.

Fellow translator Lydia Razran Stone once wrote that “Translating poetry is a series of compromises punctuated by miracles,” and can’t most creative translation be considered a kind of poetry? Miracles did happen in this project, for sure. But the fun, for me, came from the back-and-forth with Michael, the trading of ideas and inspirations, the dogged hunt for solutions that came closest to satisfying us both.

I have worked with, for, around, and even against many authors in my translation career, and I can tell you that not one of those experiences has been remotely comparable to this. I have learned so much, on so many levels, from Michael. He has made me a better translator than he found me.

Michael:

Speaking of compromises, I have to end with a few words about the way place-names have been transliterated in this book. Among the various Ukrainian place-names transliterated in line with the contemporary conventions, one — the name of my birthplace, Odessa — is spelled the old way. “Here I stand,” I basically told Liv. “I can do no other.”

And once again, we were on the same page.

Interview with ATA66 Distinguished Speaker Robert Chandler

SLD DS Robert Chandler reading Platonov's novel ChevengurAt ATA66 in Boston this year, SLD has invited literary translator and translation teacher Robert Chandler as its Distinguished Speaker. Robert began learning Russian at 15, and when he was 20, he spent a year as an exchange scholar in Voronezh, where Andrey Platonov was born and Osip Mandelstam was exiled. He has translated a wide variety of works, including by Sappho, Nadezhda Teffi, Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Grossman, and the Uzbek novelist Hamid Ismailov. He has edited three anthologies of Russian poetry, Russian short stories, and Russian magic tales for Penguin Classics. He has also taught translation workshops in London for many years. Before deciding to translate full-time, he worked for eight years as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a valuable discipline involving breath, voice, and movement. In Boston, he will be presenting two sessions:

  • “Changing Attitudes to Translating from Russian” on Friday, October 24, at 2:40 PM, about the shifting legacy and interpretation of the classic translations by Constance Garnett and what that reveals about attitudes toward translation
  • “Learning from My Mistakes” on Saturday, October 25, at 10:30 AM, focusing on misunderstandings of verbal aspects

If you haven’t already registered for ATA66, don’t wait: early bird registration ends Sunday, September 14!

What brought you to Russian in the first place, and what motivated you to stick with it? What was your path toward translating professionally and teaching translation workshops?

I was fifteen years old. I was very good at Latin and Greek but did not want to continue with what, at the time, I contemptuouly thought of as “dead languages.” And we had an excellent Russian teacher at my school – kind, patient and dedicated.

You have been teaching translation workshops for many years. What do you find rewarding about teaching translators, and what do you find challenging?

Teaching is rewarding in many ways. It makes me focus more intently than ever on each word. And there are few subjects where a complete beginner may come up with truly helpful contributions. If I were teaching engineering or astrophysics, it is unlikely that a beginner would come up with something I have never thought of. But in a translation workshop it happens all the time. There are often thousands of choices to be made, and I am never going to think of all the different possibilities myself. Real collaboration is very enjoyable.

In your opinion, what makes a good translation? Is the ability to translate well something that can be taught, and how do you go about imparting it to your students?

What makes a translation good or bad is no different from what makes any piece of writing good or bad. As for imparting the ability to translate, I don’t really know. All I can do is encourage people to focus on every word of the original – and every letter of every word. And if something doesn’t make sense – to ask questions. And then to read their translation aloud to someone who does not know the original. That is the real test: does it or does it not convey real intellectual and/or emotional meaning to the listener?

I’m very far from literary translation, so I’m mystified by the process of choosing what gets translated. When reading foreign-language works, do you ever come across something that speaks to you and makes you want to translate it? Is there any pattern to the types of works that inspire you in this way? Or do publishers come to you with something they want translated?

Every translator’s experience is likely to be different. For the main part, I myself have made my own choices and proposed them to publishers. I choose works I believe in, works that I can re-read many times with pleasure. And if it is a long project, I need to feel confident that I can live for months or years in that particular author’s world.

When translating, what’s your approach to elements of the text that draw on cultural knowledge the Russian reader would have, but an English reader wouldn’t?

As with nearly all translation questions, it depends on the individual case. Sometimes a five or ten page introduction may be the best way. Sometimes end notes may be more helpful. Sometimes, for the sake of clarity, it may be possible to slip a few extra words into the main text.

I know that picking a favorite translation project can be a bit like choosing a favorite child, but do any of your translations stand out to you as particularly memorable in some way – positively or negatively?

Hard to say. I feel a great warmth towards Teffi.  Her wit, grace and resilience are remarkable.  It is a joy to be in her company.  I am also deeply moved by the number of people who have written to me, unprompted to say that reading Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate has changed their lives.

Slovo Episode 36: John Riedl and Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya

The SLD podcast, Slovo, has a new episode! Host Halla Goins chats with Russian-to-English ATA exam graders Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya and John Riedl about the session they presented last year at ATA65 in Portland, entitled “I can’t place the accent: Identifying the characteristic traits of machine translation.” Eugenia and John share how they approached the contentious topic of AI in translation, how they drew on their background as graders and their fellow SLD members to gather data on perceptions of human and machine translations, and what they and their audience learned during the session in Portland.

This session has also been reviewed for this blog by Christine Pawlowski, and the slides for it are available in the Slavic Languages Presentation Archive.

You can listen now on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/atasld/episode-36-eugenia-tietz-sokolskaya-and-john-riedl or look for this and past episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.

Save the Date: Preparing Effectively for ATA’s Russian-to-English Certification Exam

Registration is now open for the upcoming webinar Preparing Effectively for ATA’s Russian-to-English Certification Exam on July 24 at 12:00 PM EDT. It will be presented by SLD member and certification exam grader Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya.

Interested in ATA certification but don’t know where to start? This webinar will help you prepare for the exam, using examples from actual Russian>English ATA exams and practice tests. We will cover the format of the exam, including what online resources are allowed, so you know what to expect on the day of the exam. We will take advantage of the resources made available by the Certification Program to delve into the skills and knowledge the exam is testing, with an in-depth look at the rubric and error categories used by graders to assess each candidate’s translation. We will examine examples of errors made on past exams to highlight common difficulties candidates face on the exam and discuss effective ways of preparing to overcome these challenges and increase your chances of passing on the first try. By the end, you will have an understanding of what ATA graders are looking for.

This webinar will be most useful to candidates looking to take the Russian>English and English>Russian exams, but can also provide valuable insight to any potential exam candidate with a working knowledge of Russian.

Find out more and register here.

ATA65 Review: I Can’t Place the Accent

A Review of: I Can’t Place the Accent: Identifying the Characteristics Traits of Computer Translation, presented by Eugenia Tietz-Sokolskaya, CT and John Riedl, CT on Friday, November 1 at ATA65

Review by Christine Pawlowski; slides from the presentation available in the Slavic Languages Presentation Archive

I do not feel threatened by AI,  and this is not because I think my language skills are superior to the machine. Perhaps it is mostly that my monthly social security check allows me to lighten my workload to a manageable volume. And maybe it is also that I am technologically challenged (being provided with a modem to do my work for FBIS in the 90’s was a huge step).

In my very limited experience with AI projects, I have enjoyed “beating” the machine, as when the AI translation of the word “wygodny” in Polish, which may be translated variously as “convenient” or “comfortable,” resulted in an English version of an apartment advertisement that sported a comfortable bedroom armoire—perhaps a magician’s prop?

Well before the October/November ATA65 Conference, we received a survey from Eugenia and John in which we were asked to select the best translation of several Russian texts, but we were not told who (or what) did the translation. When we arrived at the session, we learned that the translations had been done by Deepl, an NMT (Neural Machine Translation) service launched in 2017; ChatGPT 3.5, an LLM (Large Language Model) service launched in 2022; and a few different humans.

Given its timeliness, it is not surprising that generative AI figured prominently in many of the conference sessions. John and Eugenia’s session dovetailed beautifully with the subject of Holly Mikkelson’s Wednesday training for ATA graders: Prescriptive and Descriptive Language. In a nutshell, we investigated how we really speak.

In both Holly’s presentation and that of our Slavists, we looked for the “tell”—a clue or indication that reveals information or suggests a hidden truth. All translators—human or generative AI–have these tells. To find them, we looked to cohesion, fluency, syntax and terminology.

From the survey results and our on-site bantering about some of the linguistic conundrums, we learned that:

  • ChatGPT’s renditions will be grammatical and flow deceptively well but may not be accurate.
  • DeepL is easier to peg as a computer translation.
  • Human translators take liberties, which can be a blessing or a curse (hence the dangers of prescriptivism and the difficulties encountered in evaluating translation).

The good news disseminated by Eugenia and John is that humans can achieve higher quality by:

  • recasting or rewriting clauses
  • splitting or combining sentences
  • choosing subject-appropriate terms
  • substituting phrases for words and vice versa

This list suggests that skills in manipulating syntax are critical. The bad news is that humans also misspell words, misuse collocations and struggle with job fatigue.

Comparatively speaking, for the three passages we studied in the session, in every case ChatGPT came out on top of DeepL, which sticks very close to the original syntax, even to the point of unreadability. In two of the three examples, the human translation won.

Discussions of AI are ubiquitous—on Linkedin, in journals and magazines. An opinion piece in the latest edition of the journal First Things offers the suggestion that society can resist the techno-tyranny trend, which is making us miserable, by demanding human-to-human businesses because “People…will pay for happiness.”  There is some nostalgia for the way things were before the modem and the ease of searching the web for the contextually right word—but not much, in my opinion.

Christine Pawlowski is a freelance Polish and Russian translator with an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is retired from teaching elementary-school music and delights in being Busia to her 17 grandchildren and in directing and accompanying her church choir. She is ATA-certified for Polish-into-English and an ATA Certification grader for that language pair. She may be contacted at pawlow@verizon.net.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email to subscribe to SLD blog.

SLD Blog Categories