ATA SLD

Slavic Languages Division (American Translators Association)

American Translators Association: The Voice of Interpreters and Translators

SLD History and Humor: SlavFile Takes You Back to the 1990s

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by Nora Seligman Favorov

If you’re a history buff or interested in seeing how our profession has evolved over the past quarter century, or if you’re just messing around on the internet looking for something different to read, I would recommend some of the first issues of SlavFile recently posted to the SLD website.

Take, for example, the issue from February 1995. SlavFile was still in its infancy, and the RLD (not yet SLD) administrator Susana Greiss congratulated editor Christina Sever (sadly, no longer with us) and “Layout and DTP” editor Galina Raff (still doing layout lo these 25 years later!) for the great job they were doing. The switch to “Slavic” division was in the discussion stage, and division administrator Susana Greiss was asking readers for input. A “Calendar of 1995 Spring Activities” listed a number of in person (imagine that!) events (a “Russian Financial Terminology for Translators” event at a library in Seattle; “Breakfast at Denny’s,” also in Seattle; a couple of “accreditation examination” sittings, since the switch to certification still lay in the future). As a further reminder of how much things have changed, the list of resources for translators and interpreters consisted mostly of brick and mortar bookstores, along with “Top 1 Video (ask for Greg—Americanized name)” in Hollywood, California.

The May 1995 issue reflected the still relatively recent collapse of the Soviet Union with an interesting article profiling some of “Russia’s ‘New Translators,’” as well as strongly worded letters to the editor both pro and con the move toward a more inclusive Slavic Languages Division. And three cheers for Igor Vesler, whose engaging article “Ukrainian—An Emerging Market?” paired with his triple contribution to the Summer-Fall 2020 issue proves the man to be an asset with staying power. As Dagmar Kotlandova Koenig’s article in that issue, “Translating Czech in the United States” seems to demonstrate, the RLD had more success than the SLD has had attracting Czech participation, ironically enough. The Autumn 1995 issue contains a note “From the Editor’s Desk” in which editor Christina Sever announces her need to step down and a call for a replacement. Susana Greiss’s “From the Administrator” column in the following issue announced that the division was “fortunate to be able to recruit a new editor who, I think, will do us proud: Lydia Razran Stone.” She knew of what she spoke.

In case I haven’t yet convinced you to browse these 25-year-old issues of SlavFile, let me strengthen my case by quoting two funny stories from what might be only the second of Lydia’s “SlavFile Lite: Not by Word Count Alone” columns—in this case stories contributed by SlavFile’s then-assistant editor, Laura Esther Wolfson:

Funny Story No. 1: A young woman who wanted to perfect her Russian got a job working on an American exhibit demonstrating the wonders of capitalism to the Soviet masses. Her responsibilities included demonstrating a supermarket checkout scanner, which, in the interests of verisimilitude, was provided with props in the form of various grocery items made of plastic. The gaze of a Soviet visitor at the exhibit fell on a plastic sausage, and, leading the young woman to digress from the properties of the scanner, he asked what measures were taken in the U.S. to prolong the shelf-life of sausage. The young woman seized the somewhat phallic looking sausage, held it aloft and said, confident in her use of false cognates: “Они пользуются презервативами! [“They use condoms!”]

Funny Story No. 2: A woman who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the seventies told me about a New Year’s party she attended in that city at the residence of a Western diplomat. At midnight, one of the guests exclaimed, ‘What a pity that some poor KGB agent has to see in the new year eavesdropping on us instead of having a good time with his friends and family!’ A few seconds passed, the phone rang, and the sound of a champagne cork popping was clearly audible at the other end of the line.

Enjoy!

Nora Seligman Favorov is Associate Editor of SlavFile and a freelance translator of Russian literature and history.

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2020 Summer-Fall SlavFile: Looking Ahead to ATA61

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The latest issue of SlavFile is out! At a whopping 32 pages, this summer-fall installment of the newsletter includes something for everyone:

  • Previews of the upcoming ATA conference
    • An interview with this year’s Greiss Lecturer / Distinguished Speaker, Ellen Elias-Bursać, co-sponsored with the Literary Division
    • Abstracts for Slavic-related sessions
  • Timely resources for our new pandemic reality
    • A glossary of COVID neologisms
    • A review of another COVID glossary
    • COVID-related (and unrelated) humor
    • How to keep your skills fresh in quarantine
  • Literary translations and related articles
    • What it’s like being a newcomer to the literary field (complete with an excerpt of said newcomer’s translation!)
    • The hands-on process of translating The Cherry Orchard for teenagers
    • Poems translated from Slovenian
  • Bonus material
    • An explanatory guide to American news and political jargon

You can find the latest issue on the SlavFile page (see tabs above), along with issues going back to 1995, with new issues added to the archive just this month. Happy reading!

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Spring 2020: A Very Literary SlavFile

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By sheer coincidence, this year’s spring issue of SlavFile turned out to be focused almost entirely on literary translation. The issue starts with Isaac Wheeler’s insightful “Hierarchy of Conflicting Demands,” in which he prioritizes seven stipulations a literary translation must meet, ranging from (No. 1) “Does it produce the same effect on the reader as the original?” to (No. 7) “Does it use the same metaphorical mechanism as the original?” He talks about various efforts to figure out what goes on “under the hood” during literary translation. The examples he draws from his own work demonstrate a keen attentiveness to what’s happening under his own. His article is followed by Part II of Steven McGrath’s excellent interview with literary translator Carol Apollonio, which centers on her experiences translating Chekhov. The issue also features a lengthy interview with Olga Bukhina, who has spent decades translating Anglophone children’s literature into Russian (and who oversees a Russian-into-English translation contest for bilingual children). Two reviews of sessions presented at ATA60 in Palm Springs are also literary: Julia LaVilla-Nossova’s review of Martha Kosir’s “On Understanding and Translating Humor: The Spirits of Heinrich Boll’s House” and my own review of Shelley Fairweather-Vega’s “Decolonizing Central Asia through Translation.” The issue concludes with Part IV of Lydia Razran Stone’s contemplation of Krylov, commenced in commemoration of last year’s 250th anniversary of his birth.

Even our administrators’ “Notes from the Administrative Underground,” which ponders the isolation that is, at times, a part of our profession and how our SLD community can help ease it (we’ve all become even more isolated since it was originally written in early March!), features Zinaida Gippius’s poem “Цепь,” evocatively translated by Maria Jacqueline Evans. We hope our readers will enjoy and learn from this superb (if we may say so ourselves) issue.

Nora Seligman Favorov

Associate Editor

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Digging into the SlavFile Lite Archives (Part 3)

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This is the third in a series of posts reprinting Lydia Razran Stone’s editorial columns from past years. You can find the first two posts here and here.

Fall 2007

We have recently returned from a trip to St. Petersburg, Moscow and points in between on the inland waterway and I seem to be suffering from a case of severe, if intermittent, culture shock. It is not the differences between today’s Russia and the United States that have me reaching for my inhaler, but the sharp contrast between the Russia of today and what I experienced during the other two periods I spent in that country—the early to mid-1960’s (several trips with my father who was investigating Soviet psychophysiology) and the early to mid-1990s (several trips to work in Moscow on a joint book sponsored by NASA). Of course, I know that my first-hand acquaintance with my family’s erstwhile homeland and thus my impressions have been laughably short-lived and superficial. Perhaps on each visit I have managed to see through only a very few chinks in the Potemkin façade presented to foreigners. I am also painfully aware that many, if not most, of my readers have a vastly more extensive and profound knowledge of the changes in Russia over this period. Nevertheless, with your indulgence, I will attempt to share some of my impressions here. Who knows? Every once in a while, the view through a chink may provide a new perspective.

The Moscow relative of a friend of mine visited New York and Washington about a decade ago and reported that one of the things that most struck her here were the ubiquitous delicious odors of cooking in urban streets. This does not seem to be true of the Russian capitals—perhaps, surprisingly, this is one advertising secret the new Russians have not yet learned. Or perhaps the smell of food is simply overpowered, especially in Moscow, by the smell of money, bargeloads of new, fresh (if not necessarily clean) money. Everything in the center of the city is well-tended (when I was last there in 1996, the grass around the Kremlin appeared not to have been mowed in at least a year). The stores (if that is not too plebeian a name for them) on central city streets are at least as forbiddingly pricey and elegant as those of any city I am familiar with. Our old friend GUM looks now like Georgetown Park (the most upscale of upscale malls in DC), filled with stores that are so elegant that they have only one item in the window, and only a couple more in the shop, and a like number of customers if that. Indeed, a Russian-born friend suggests that GUM may primarily be a money laundering operation. (Why carry more than three pairs of shoes, when what you are doing is selling the same $600 pair over and over?)

The new houses we saw built and being built in the dacha region on the banks of the waterway we traveled are not the picturesque cottages the word evokes but McDachas—коттеджи, whose opulence overshadows vacation homes in Palm Springs, to pick a U.S. example. The boats and recreational water sports equipment to be seen are worthy of Nantucket. It can still be reported that in the cities (especially the far outskirts of the capitals and smaller cities such as Yaroslavl) there are still Soviet-style exurban apartment complexes, crumbling masonry, balconies that look like they are in imminent danger of falling, and apartment houses where “normal people” live that have front entrances resembling the back doors of slum dwellings. On the other hand, upscale, modern and Western new construction and reconstruction is everywhere—stretching far, far beyond the tourist-oriented center of the cities. In the capitals at least, infrastructure, especially main roads, seems also to have been given at least a fraction of the attention it much needed the last time I visited here. The most striking infrastructure innovation we noted was a double-, or maybe even triple- or quadruple-, length toilet bus, parked outside the Hermitage and judging by appearances hooked up to the local sewer system.

At the risk of sounding downright un-American—and even though in general people seemed more cheerful than I had ever seen them in these climes and I saw many fewer signs of real poverty—I must admit that the sight of all this money being poured into the capitals made me uneasy. Where is it all coming from? Yes, I do know about petrorubles, but is that really all? We have learned that the Communists beggared the rest of the country for their own personal benefits and that of the capitals. But the benefits accruing to the capitals and the public and personal lives of at least some of their inhabitants is so much more startling now! Is the rest of the country becoming commensurately more impoverished? The only non-capital city not depen­dent on the tourist trade that we visited was Yaroslavl and, while it was in no way as opulent as Moscow or Petersburg, it seemed to me considerably more prosperous than the Moscow of 1996.

Perhaps, if someone had asked Marie Antoinette how to make a city look more beautiful and prosperous, she would have replied, “Get rid of all the ugly and poor people.” One can ask not only what has been added to the capitals to change them so much, but also what has been taken away. Here is a list of things I saw less of than I had before or would have expected.

  • Diversity (чернокожие or at least a heavier sprinkling of obvious non-Northern Europeans); indeed if I had had the black hair of my youth and only a moderate suntan, I estimate I would have been in the top 1% of the racially exotic in most of the crowds I was in Russia (foreign tourists excepted). Ironically, the diversity of (non-Soviet) ethnic restaurants has increased a great deal.
  • Drunks (compared to the 1990s): a really marked decline.
  • Obvious prostitutes: perhaps they are just dressing better or have adopted more subtle recognition cues.
  • Beggars and shabby people selling household possessions or single cigarettes: none at all noted in the center of the capitals, though there were a few outside the cities e.g., at Peterhof, or in the smaller cities on the river. This is a general observation compared to the mid-90’s and I would not venture to say that there were none to be seen throughout the city.
  • The thuggish bodyguards one used to see standing outside certain types of establishment in the 1990s.
  • The kinds of Soviet types (here I am talking appearance and demeanor rather than ideology) our memories of the Soviet Union are populated with (definitely still around in the 90s): stout and officious minor officials (mainly women), бабушки and бабы of all sorts—rural and urban, middle-aged to elderly men in caps with medals or even just значки in their lapels. There ought to be a Red Book of Endangered Species for them.
  • Police presence: In two weeks, I only noticed traffic cops (looking to me as if they were up to their old tricks) and the one young policeman who told us relatively politely not to sit on the grass in front of St. Basil’s.

The question arises, in my mind at least, as to what has happened to all these people. Many may have simply been gotten out of town: deported (but surely some of the чернокожие one used to see had residence permits), persuaded to leave through quasi-official harassment or other less than savory means of gentrification, or simply gone in search of somewhere cheaper to live. The police and the prostitutes and maybe the bodyguards are undoubtedly undercover. But still, can the populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg born before, say, 1960 have left in such large numbers, or have they miraculously been transformed into only slightly tarnished versions of New Russians? Why hasn’t the experience of their formative years been imprinted on their appearance, demeanor, and service philosophy the way it seems to have been on those who emigrated to Brighton Beach?

Here are a few other things that I noticed were diminished compared to my previous visits or expectations.

  • The number of birds (other than those used to living symbiotically with man) and insects (and remember we were on the river) was startlingly small compared to what one would expect in a healthy ecology. This is really frightening.
  • Soldiers other than those who appeared to be about 17. In the 1960s, the streets were full of burly adult soldiers with multiple decorations, many of whom walked hand in hand.
  • At some point in the 1990s, it appeared that every other apartment dweller in Moscow had a large dog. This trend has apparently normalized.
  • The length of the line at the Red Square Mausoleum—but there is still a line.
  • The quality and quantity of fish on offer (especially smoked fish and caviar) compared to the 1960s. My belief is that all the best kinds have simply been used up.
  • Likewise the quality of the bread.
  • Likewise the tea, which in all restaurants and other public places we visited came in bags.
  • While the prices of books have not gone down, they were much lower than I expected after hearing that Moscow was the most expensive city in the world. Are they being subsidized? But having no desire to look a gift horse (or more precisely, edition of Black Beauty) in the mouth, I loaded up on children’s poetry and reference books.

A few things that have increased in number or quality.

  • Pretty girls. Remember the old stereotype of the Russian female as a maiden with potato shaped hips and a potato shaped nose? Well, forget it. My husband, a well-known expert on the subject, rates the girls of the Russian capitals only slightly below those of Rio de Janeiro, but adds that the Slavic beauties are much less interesting because of the low diversity.
  • Fast food eateries. I suppose the actual number of McDonald’s has increased, but they are attracting much less attention now, because there are so many rivals, imported—Sbarro, for example—and homegrown—one called Крошки Картошки, and another featuring a large selection of blini and kasha dishes.
  • My impression is that a monolingual Russian speaker trying to read the signs on stores within, say a radius of 10 miles of the Kremlin, would have no less trouble than a monolingual speaker of English confronted with these same signs.
  • Skill at advertising and PR. My memory of 1993-96 is that there were just as many advertisements (billboards, etc.) as there are now but that they were generally of very poor quality, unsubtle, and frequently (mis)translated from English. Now there is real evidence that Tverskоy Boulevard has mastered the skills of Madison Avenue. I saw some really clever ads. One that particularly sticks in my memory was for a product to treat traveler’s diarrhea that was posted on the inside of the doors of stalls in the women’s room at Sheremetyevo. An informal survey provided unambiguous results regarding the product most commonly advertised: cell phones and associated technology.
  • Relative prevalence of efficient service with a smile (or at least not a scowl of enmity). Based on shopping trips to Brighton Beach (to be fair the last was several years ago), though, Soviet-style service has not died out everywhere in the world. Ironically, the only place I myself encountered old-style frustratingly inefficient service this trip was at a church products kiosk on Red Square.
  • Quality and diversity of available produce. How many years ago was it that people lined up for hours for a couple of bananas? Now kiwis go unremarked in Yaroslavl. I am not speaking here solely of the fruit and vegetables in restaurants catering to tourists—but also street and central municipal markets. Prices, while probably high for the average Russian, seemed more than reasonable to me.
  • Quality of musical performances that tourists are taken to. Evenings of opera and ballet selections and choral performances in churches. Astonishingly good, better than anything designed for tourists I have seen anywhere. (Though one would have preferred a whole opera or ballet.)

While GUM has been turned into a clone of Georgetown Park, significant chunks of the Russian past seem to be in the process of turning into a huge theme park. This is not all spurious or tasteless, though I suppose it is all driven by the profit motive. The island of Kizhi, for example, is a wonderful, tasteful outdoor museum, diminished only slightly, if at all, by the accoutrements required for the tourist trade. Who among us, no matter how highbrow, in the course of a cultural afternoon might not want a WC, a bottle of water, a snack, or even a souvenir or two? On the other hand, there is no denying that there is a considerable kitschy and spurious element to it all, whatever its Disneyesque charm. To my mind the symbol of this aspect is the matryoshka. Does everyone know that: “Contrary to…popular belief, the matryoshka has no roots in Russian folk culture at all”? (Figes: Natasha’s Dance, pg. 267) This doll was dreamed up in 1891 at a workshop associated with the Russian “arts and crafts” movement on the model of a traditional Japanese nesting doll. Thus, by the way, it would seem equally valid (if the word can be used in this context) to have matryoshki decorated with Winnie the Pooh or Harry Potter as with females in Russian peasant dress, and I no longer have to feel guilty about purchasing the former two for my grandchildren.

The ironies of the “peasant past as theme park” phenomenon were brought home to me, when we got off the river boat at Uglich. There a souvenir торговый ряд of at least a mile in length had been set up for the benefit of boat tourists, complete with musicians, kiosks in the style of embellished huts, etc., etc. On the path, a stooped very old woman, of exactly the type whose absence I noted in the capitals, complete with headscarf, was attempting to sell postcards and roadside flowers. One of the tour directors, feeling that she was impeding the smooth flow of traffic off the several boats, said, and I quote verbatim, “Бабушка, уйдите отсюда, вам здесь нет места”[Grandma, go somewhere else, this is no place for you.] I guess the real thing is never welcome in the theme park.

If the Russian past has become a theme park, then its theme song is Kalinka. I was never much aware of Kalinka as anything other than one of many Russian folk songs, one that I rather liked. But with Soviet-style unanimity it seems to have been singled out by buskers, restaurant musicians, etc. I gradually got to feel about it as about some particularly annoying advertising jingle, and even, out of the kindness of my heart, tried to advise street musicians that they would get more tourist contributions if they were to play virtually anything else. It should be noted that the Soviet past is evidently too fresh and too raw to have yet undergone a similar process of theme-parkization. However, the profit motive being what it is, I would not rule such a development out. When you hear the first announcements that SovietLand is being built and will soon be open to the public, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Well, I guess that’s all except for a couple of personal peak experiences that I would like to share. There are more, but I am not without mercy and will save the rest for another column.

Biggest Realization (call it a “duh moment”): That “Подмосковные вечера”(translated into English as Moscow Suburban Evenings) is not about the barren plots filled with huge depressing apartment complexes (as, against all reason, I had always thought) but about the dacha regions.

Favorite Purchase. A T-shirt that has written on it: “ВСЕ БАБЫ КАК БАБЫ…А Я БОГИНЯ.”(All other broads are just dames, but I am a goddess.)

Greatest Linguistic Triumph. Picture this scene: Peterhof. A beautiful August morning. Slightly disheveled lady tourist (SDLT) with binoculars slung around her neck is confronted by довольно нахальный молодой человек (ДНМЧ) (smart-ass young man) who attempts to get her to buy postcards.

SDLT (quite politely) Нет, спасибо—не надо. (Thank you, I don’t want any.)

ДНМЧ (evidently, irritated by SDLT’s presumptuous attempt to speak his language and determined to show her up.) Нахально. Тогда дайте мне ваши бинокли—сегодня как раз день моего рождения. (Well, then give me your binoculars—today just happens to be my birthday.)

SDLT (in a tone of astonishment). Почему, кем вы мне приходитесь? (But why, who are you to me?)

ДНМЧ (inspired) Ведь я ваш потерянный внук—разве не узнаете? (Actually, I am your long-lost grandson, don’t you know me?)

SDLT (after a pause to consider this information) Нет, это невозможно—все мои внуки очень красивые. (No, that is impossible, all my grandsons are very handsome.)

Loud laughter from friends of ДНМЧ standing around in the vicinity. SDLT exits smugly.

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Digging into the SlavFile Lite Archives (Part 2)

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This is the second in a series of posts reprinting Lydia Razran Stone’s editorial columns from past years. You can find the first post here and check out the SlavFile archive here.

 

July 1996

An inveterate Slavist named Stone

Has been writing this column alone.

Now ’tis time for you, reader,

То have pity and heed hег

And contгibute some words of your own

Come on, you people, someone out theгe must have а joke, an anecdote, а poem, а license plate, а reciре, а review, an opinion, or an insight to shaгe. We want to puЬlish them – in English or any Slavic language.

I am the kind of person who is constantly losing things. No, scratch that. I haгdly ever lose anything for good, but I am always misplacing things. (Затерялось, а не потерялось.) For this reason, triumphant cries of «нашла» are always resounding through my house as I express my relief that I will not have to report my credit card missing, go apply for anotheг dгiver’s license or admit to Susana Greiss that I have lost all the сору for the latest issue of the SlavFile. Му husband theгefore has added this to his small stock of Russian idiomatic expressions. Не fuгthermore is sure he knows exactly when it should bе used, whenever you find something you have been searching for. Не cannot understand why our Russian friends laugh whenever, in this context, he exclaims «Нашла!».

For no particular reason, this reminds me of my dear friend Dr. G. in Moscow. Although а brilliant engineer (it was he who designed the systems that kept Layka alive in space), an ехреrt on Russian literature, theater, and art, and an all-around great human being, Dr. G. has, as he readily admits, little facility for foreign languages. Despite frequent trips to the U .S. and many return visits bу English-speaking scientists, he speaks very·little English; however, he generally declines all my offers to help him add to his store of useful or polite English phrases, rightfully claiming that he gets along extremely well as it is. I was thus somewhat surprised when the last time I saw him, he asked me to compose and teach him an English phrase to help him deal with the situation he found most daunting in the U.S. It turned out that, even when an interpreter was present, my intrepid friend, а former colonel, was terrified of American waiters and waitresses, or more particularly of the numerous choices they kept trying to foist on him (white, rye, whole wheat, or pita?, mayonnaise оr mustard and if mayonnaise light or regular?, ranch, blеu cheese or thousand islatnd? baked, French fried or mashed potatoes? if baked then butter or sour cream? if sour cream then regular or low fat?). Тogether we tailored and drilled him on а phrase to help him avoid such torture, i.e., whatever уои suggest will bе fine!

I suppose that sooner or later the amount of good material suitable for our dictionary column will diminish. But this is certainly not the case of the current issue, what with the results of оur survey to report, as well as various other dictionary related matters to discuss. Has anyone else noticed the preponderance of names starting with а “К” sound associated with good Russian dictionaries, Callaham, Katzner, Kuznetsov, Carpovich, Kamkin? I have absolutely no hypothesis, even а frivolous one, as to why this should Ье the case. Does anyone? Could it Ье а plot?

I have been lurking in my local shopping center parking lot, hanging around а саr with the license plate МХАТ frequently parked there, hoping that the owner will return and I will get to meet а disciple of Stanislavskiy. I realize that there is а good сhапсе that the license plate stands fоr something completely different, but I can’t imagine what!

Does everyone realize that translators may bе the only professionals who get paid each time they аrе politically correct? After all, wе receive 3 times the рау fоr writing he or she as we used to get for plain he.

At the recent East Coast Regionnl Conference of the АТA, I gave а paper on the translation of personality test items, of the type (I do not like everyone I know оr At times I feel like swearing). This topic waS suggested to me bу а translation job in which I was asked to translate а Russian test battery, раrt of which had been translated into Russian from an English original. Since the subtitle of my рареr was А Cross Cultural Game of Telephone, I decided to have the translators in the audience translate statements back and forth in а variation of the children’s game. This turned out to bе both amusing and instructive. Неrе is one example of our results (Please nоtе that there was no wау, other than the honor system, to keep people from peeking at previous translations.)

Кто-то пытается воздействовnть на мои мысли.

Someone is attempting to influence my thinking.

Кто-то пытается повлиять на то, как я думаю.

Someone is attempting to influence my thoughts.

Кое-кто пытается повлиять на мое мышление.

Someone is trying to influence my mind right now.

В данный момент кое-кто старается оказать влияние на мои мысли.

At any given time, someone is trying to influence me.

Порой люди пытаются влиять на меня.

It would bе interesting to think of some more contexts or even purposes for the use of translation telephone.

 

Fall 1997

Stray Words

Vadim Khazin responded to our suggestion that readers send in their own list of the words they most dislike translating. His contribution follows:

Неrе is my selection of 10 “beloved” English words or expressions, most of them legalese:

  1. pattern
  2. master (as in master calendar)
  3. commitment
  4. advocate
  5. provider (as in lzealth care provider)
  6. the Government (as in Immigration Court where it refers to the side opposing the petitioner; it is similar to the State or the People in other courts but cannot bе rendered as обвинитель)
  7. Counsellor for the Government (again, it cannot bе rendered as обвинитель or прокурор) since the petitioner has not been accused of anything)
  8. Order and Judgment
  9. county: For some bizarre reason this is often translated as графство, although in this country, unlike Britain, there have never been any counts. I translate this as округ, which is good until you come to the District оf Columbia, traditionally rendered as округ Колумбия. And there are other administrative divisions as well which seem difficult to render in Russian. So my tenth selection is:
  10. township

I was interested to see that the first word cited was pattem. Some years ago, I (Lydia) made my life as а translator easier when I realized that Russian did not have а single word that could bе unambiguously translated as pattern. The discovery that complex phrases involving words such as закономерность, схема, or характер could simply bе traнslated as pattern was а great relief. Since then I have bееn collecting Russian words that, in certain contexts, are most appropriately, if not uniquely, translatable as pattern, i.e.: образ, шаблон, модель, узор, характер, характеристика, структура, образец, образчик, маршрут, конфигурация, схема, тип, способ, рисунок, картина, профиль, форма, тип, диаграмма, манера, изображение, строение, (кристаллическая) решетка, последовательность, таблица, расположение, строение, режим, паттерн, мозаика, набор, путь, стереотип, растр, комбинация, склад, распределение, аnd my favorite, закономерность.

Right before pattern in my mental card file of stray words comes pastrami. Every time I see this word, I think of the visiting Russian scientist I tutored when I was living in Boulder, Colorado. Aside from the language lessons I gave him, often either the scientist himself or the American scientists who worked with him would ask me to explain to him some aspect of American culture or language that was causing perplexity or communication problems. Once he initiated а conversation about pastrami, which was listed on the menu of the Furr’s Cafeteria where he ate lunch. It took me а while to discover the nature and cause of the problem. While at some level Sergey knew very well that English nouns did not undergo declension and that they certainly did not have the same endings as Russian ones, this superficial knowledge could nоt stand up against decades of experience with his native tongue. Thus when he spotted the old familiar instrumental plural ending on pastrami on the menu he kept feeling cheated that his sandwich would fail to arrive with а number of pastries on the side.

This anecdote in turn reminds me of а story told to me bу а Russian teacher of mine. Неr recently arrived aunt returned from а cookout with some new American acquaintances and recounted: «Они угостили меня горячими собачками и холодными кошками.» No amount of argument could convince her that it was “cold” cuts and not cats. After аll what could bе а more fittiпg companion to hot dogs! То continue on the subject of meat: а few years ago while talking about nutrition with some acquaintances in Moscow, I thought I had asserted in Russian that the trouble with the American diet is that people eat far too much protein. That night, however, I realized that I had once more gotten my case endings mixed up and had said instead that we eat far too many squirrels. I woпdered why the Russians I said this to had not reacted to this as anything at аll strange, and finally decided that it was no weirder than anything else people had been telling them about life in the U.S.

end of SlavFile reprint

Digging into the SlavFile Lite Archives (Part 1)

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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.

Summer-Fall SlavFile Out Now!

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Head over to the SlavFile page to check out the latest issue of the SLD newsletter! This issue includes lots of useful information on the upcoming ATA conference in Palm Springs, including an interview with this year’s Greiss speaker, highlights of sessions that might be of interest, the annual meeting agenda, and information on the newcomers’ lunch and SLD dinner. There is also a generous helping of the usual SlavFile fare: translator lives in review, linguistic humor, idioms and cultural references, answers to newcomer questions, and more!

Translation Scams, Part I. Recognizing and Avoiding Scams (SlavFile Reprint)

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By Olga Shostachuk

This article is reprinted with permission from the latest issue of the SLD newsletter, SlavFile. You can find the current issue and an archive back to 1999 at https://www.ata-divisions.org/SLD/slavfile/.

You would think that after decades of attempting to scrupulously identify and combat the Internet’s oldest hustle, namely email scams, there`d be a fix for them by now. Alas, there is not. Internet access, social media, and the convenience and anonymity of email, along with the capability these provide for easily contacting thousands of people at once, enables scammers to work in volume. Although translators are generally aware of scams these days, even experienced, savvy translators get duped on occasion. The fraudsters continually refine their techniques and expand their targets, so it is crucial to stay alert.

This article describes some of the many email-based scams targeting translators (and often other types of freelancers as well). We hope this information will help you to better recognize potential traps and avoid them. The Federal Trade Commission (https://www.ftc.gov) is a great resource for further information on new and “recycled” scams and how to avoid cybercriminals.

Common types of scams

Many scams fall into a few broad categories, described below.

419 Advance fee fraud

This type of scam is also known as the Nigerian Prince scam, the Spanish Prisoner scam, the black money scam, Fifo’s Fraud, and the Detroit-Buffalo scam. These schemes are quite elaborate and, despite their somewhat preposterous appearance, they manage to hook a surprising number of victims. The classic 419 advance fee scam attempts to entice the victim into a bogus plot to acquire and split a large sum of cash. The translator variant of this scheme is usually one in which a translator is asked to perform a translation, paid in advance for the work, and then asked to refund an accidental overpayment.

Here is how it works. Once you’ve taken the initial bait, i.e., responded to the original job message, you will likely receive a sizable document to translate (usually 3,000-5,000 words) and an offer of payment. If you go on to accept the job, you will soon discover that the client has sent payment in advance (even if advance payment was not among the agreed-upon terms) and has “mistakenly” sent a check for a much larger amount than the agreed-upon fee. The scammer will ask you to return the excess funds, usually by bank wire. Alas, because of the length of time it takes to process a check, particularly one from overseas, by the time your bank informs you that the check is fake and no funds have been credited to your account, you will have long since sent the bank wire and had the money pulled from your account and transferred to the scammer. Thus, you are out whatever effort you put into the translation as well as the funds you wired to cover the “overpayment.”

Phishing emails

Phishing emails have been crafted to look as if they were sent from a legitimate organization, when in fact they aim to fool you into visiting a bogus website where you inadvertently download malware (viruses and other software intended to compromise your computer) or reveal sensitive personal or account information. Phishing emails usually contain a link that appears to take you to a legitimate company`s website to fill in your information, but the website is a clever fake and the information you provide goes straight to the crooks behind the scam.

Subscription scams

Subscription scammers approach translators (and other freelancers) with the promise of well-paying work, but they want you to pay for the leads or subscribe to their services for a fee. All they want is your money, not your skills. You might as well throw your money away.

Resume (identity) theft

In this scenario, fraudsters pluck a translator’s resume from a website such as www.proz.com, set up an e-mail account in the translator’s name, and send (often poorly crafted) e-mails posing as the professional translator and soliciting work. It is unclear how exactly this profits them, although they might get paid; but certainly it damages your reputation.

SlavFile editor Jen Guernsey warns of another scam in which the scammer impersonates a legitimate company. If a new company contacts you be sure to look closely at the website and domain name.

Recognizing and avoiding email scams

The screen shot below contains numerous red flags indicating that this email is likely a scam:

Source: www.webroot.com

1 and 2. The email is not addressed to the recipient by name. Here, the addressee is “you” and “Dear customer.” Either the fraudsters don`t know your name, or they are using a template and not bothering to customize it.

3. The email doesn’t make sense. In this instance, it might reference an account that you never created. Or it states that you have exceeded the number of login attempts allowed, when you haven’t even been trying to sign in to that account.

4. The email contains a surprising number of grammatical or spelling errors, even though it ostensibly comes from a professional entity such as a bank or a translation company.

5. The email encourages you to confirm that the email is legitimate by clicking on a link provided in the email itself.

6. The email contains a link to a site or an email address that does not match the text of the link. To see the link destination, simply hover your cursor over the website link (without clicking), or click on the email address link, and you will see that the website or email address does not match the email originator or the purported destination. In this example, you can see the true link address displayed along the bottom of the screen.

Here is another typical example of a fraudulent solicitation. In November 2017, an email from George Boucher, georgyboucher@gmail.com, landed in my mailbox. It read: My dear! I’m in need of your service to translate the attached English content document. However, I have some questions such as:

1.How much would you charge per page, word or for the entire translation?
2. Specialized language/s.
3. Preferred mode of payment, though I would like to propose cashier’s check or bank certified check and do not hesitate to confirm if this is okay by you.
Project deadline is 1 month starting from 12/20/2017.

What are the warning signs here?

1. First of all, no client, especially a new one, is likely to call you “My dear.”

2. Grammar, style, and register are all off.

3. If a “client” found your info somewhere online, he or she would already know your language combination(s). No legitimate client reaches out to a translator without specifying the required language pair.

Tips to help you avoid being taken

The following recommendations can minimize your chances of falling victim of an email scam.

1. Utilize good general cybersecurity practices:

  • Filter spam
  • Don`t trust unsolicited email
  • Treat email attachments with caution
  • Don`t click links in suspicious or unsolicited email messages
  • Install antivirus software and keep it up to date
  • Install a personal firewall and keep it up to date
  • Install and activate a web tool that identifies malicious sites (every standard browser now has a tool you can turn on to alert you if a website you are trying to access appears malicious)
  • Configure your email client for security.

2. Never share your banking information with somebody you don’t know. If your overseas clients insist on paying you via wire transfer, or this is your preferred method of payment for overseas clients, you may set up a separate secondary account in your or any bank which you would use only for wire transfers for your overseas clients and transfer the money to your regular bank account right after the transaction. This is a great way to safeguard your regular account in case your bank info is hacked. 3. Ask as many questions as you can. If a “client” tells you that she has a 30-page article to translate, ask for the subject, style, details, background, and the like. A legitimate client will be able to give you all of this information in a blink, whereas a scammer will avoid the answers or will give you answers that seem off or simply don’t make sense.

4. Be suspicious if an email says that they found you on https://www.atanet.org/, for example. People generally make reference to institutions, not domains.

5. If you receive a link to a site or a downloadable file from a known colleague but your colleague has not communicated with you in advance and/or you don’t know why you’re receiving the link, do not click on it. Instead, contact your colleague and ask him or her about the matter. Do NOT respond directly to the email. Create a new email, or better yet, call.

6. Use your own link. If you receive a message supposedly from a legitimate company, go to its site directly from the web using any search engine but not through the email you received . This is the ONLY way to guarantee that you land on the legitimate site of a known company.

7. Hover before you click. Whenever you receive an unsolicited email asking you to “click here,” beware – even if it sounds like a legitimate company. The same goes for social networking links that take you to what appear to be login pages. These may in fact be sites designed to steal your information.

8. Google the named company or individual. Try keying in their name as well as an excerpt from the message text. Crooks often use the same wording and names for multiple translation scam attempts.

9. Ask for an advance fee. If the job is large, ask to be paid in installments and ask for a retainer. If at any stage the “client” suggests they’ve overpaid and asks you to wire back part of the payment, don’t! It’s a scam. Do not begin working until the payment fully clears. Be prepared to pay a bank fee if the check is fake.

10. Set up a PayPal or Square account, or any alternative thereof, (https://www.merchantmaverick.com/top-7-square-alternatives/) to be able to take a full or partial payment in advance from a new or unknown client that you find suspicious. 

11. Pay no commissions or subscription fees. Translation is a large, fast-growing field, so you shouldn`t have to pay to get work. Try to be creative in finding your own clients.

Valuable resources:

https://wantwords.co.uk/school/lesson-61-how-to-protect-your-translator-cv-from-scammers/

https://www.proz.com/about/translator-scam-alerts

https://www.translator-scammers.com/translator-scammers-directory.htm

https://www.proz.com/forum/946

https://www.ftc.gov

Olga Shostachuk is a PhD Candidate in Translation Studies at Kent State University, Kent, OH, where she previously completed her M.A. in Translation degree. She also holds an M.A. in Education and Linguistics from Lviv National University in Ukraine and a paralegal degree from the Academy of Court Reporting in Cleveland, Ohio. Ms. Shostachuk served as the Vice Chapter Chair for Ohio IMIA and currently is a Ukrainian editor for SlavFile, the newsletter of Slavic Languages Division of the ATA. She is also a Ukrainian into English grader for the ATA certification exam. Her research focuses on legal and medical translation, computer-assisted translation, psycholinguistics, localization, pedagogy, and assessment. She can be reached at olgalviv27@yahoo.com.

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Coming Out of the Shadow: Review of Madeline G. Levine’s Susana Greiss Lecture [from SlavFile]

Reviewed by Christine Pawlowski

Reprinted from SlavFile

Each year at the American Translators Association Annual Conference, the Susana Greiss lecture brings an eminent guest lecturer to speak upon some aspect of translation/interpretation related to the Slavic languages. ATA’s Polonists owe a debt of gratitude to Nora Favorov, who initially reached out to Madeline Levine, the 2016 speaker. Dr. Levine’s address, “In the Shadow of Russian: Forty Years of Translating Polish Literature,” proved a seminal event: Dr. Levine became the first speaker in the nineteen-year history of the Greiss lecture to address a Polish subject.

Graduates of Slavic Studies programs in the United States have often encountered the tendency to categorize the various Slavic literatures as “major” or “minor,” with Russian at the top. In 1963, Dr. Levine, a Russian specialist at Harvard, chose to study Polish as her secondary literature requirement. It turned out to be a serendipitous decision; the need for scholarly attention to and good literary translation of Polish was extreme. In fact, an American colleague of Dr. Levine’s once greeted her with the question, “Is there really such a thing as Polish literature?” Learning “at breakneck speed” to read Polish, Dr. Levine began a lifelong career translating this “minor” literature.

Dr. Levine’s early work was made more difficult by the lack of critical resources available. (She singled out Kridl’s “stupefyingly dull,” blue-covered, pictureless survey.) This situation was radically transformed by the publication of Miłosz’s 1969 work, The History of Polish Literature, which helped to provide a cultural and historical context for Polish literature in a “readable, even exciting” way. As I pulled out my 40-year-old copy of this book, heavily annotated in the early ‘70s, I found myself in wholehearted agreement. Miłosz’s work, with its determination to “avoid… scholarly dryness” and “preserve… a trace of a smile” must have created something of a Lazarus experience when it first appeared—Polish literature was alive after all.

Among other groundbreaking efforts for Polish literature in English, Dr. Levine explored the “labors of love” undertaken by Celina Wieniewska and Barbara Vedder. These pioneering women translated the works of Bruno Schulz and Tadeusz Borowski, two unknown writers whose influence now reaches worldwide. Dr. Levine has produced new translations of these works, and her translation of Bruno Schulz’s prose fiction is soon to be published by Northwestern University Press.

A primary focus of Dr. Levine’s work has been Jewish-themed literature in the Polish language. In translating works about the Holocaust and in her work as a university professor, she has delved into the question: “How is it possible that such horror can be captured and transformed into works of artistic beauty?” She has also taken on another wartime subject: her re-translation of Białoszewski’s Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising was released by the New York Review of Books in their Classics series.

Dr. Levine has had her share of good fortune: at a very young age, she obtained her first position as Assistant Professor at the City University of New York “sight unseen” after a phone interview. She enjoyed the stability of her position in the University of North Carolina’s Slavic Languages and Literatures Department (now Germanic & Slavic Languages and Literatures). However, she has also experienced the vicissitudes of the publishing industry and, as a result, seems to have developed the patience of a saint! After 40 years of sharing an unknown literary culture with readers and students, Dr. Levine leaves her audience with the firm conviction that she has only just begun. When I asked her at our communal lunch: “So what still needs to be translated?” She responded: “Everything!”

I encourage you to read excerpts from Dr. Levine’s talk on the next page to learn more about the fascinating and, at times, frustrating professional journey of a “student-teacher-scholar-translator.”

Christine Pawlowski is a freelance Polish and Russian translator with an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University, “Tsvetograd.” She is retired from teaching elementary music and enjoys being called “Busia” by her 10 grandchildren. She is ATA certified (Polish-English). She may be reached at pawlow@verizon.net.

end of SlavFile reprint

This article first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of SlavFile. We invite you to check out the full publication for the excerpts from Dr. Levine’s talk referenced in the review, as well as a follow-up by Nora Favorov, “The List,” about the list of pre-1945 works in various Slavic languages that still need to be translated.

Going to this year’s ATA conference in Washington, DC? Then we encourage you to attend this year’s Susana Greiss lecture! “The Long and Winding Road to Becoming a Presidential Interpreter,” presented by Nikolai Sorokin, will take place on Thursday, October 26, at 3:30 PM. Nikolai Sorokin will also present a session on interpreting on Friday, October 27, at 10:00 AM, titled “Wow! How Am I Going to Interpret That?”. We hope to see you there!

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