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INTERVIEW:
Elena Maximova
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Q. How did you come to the translation business?
A. I can say that I was driven to it by circumstances over which I had
no control :-))). Actually, I never wanted to be a translator. What I
really wanted was to become an "expert" in a very serious field - e.g.,
a physician. (My parents and my grandparents were physicians.) However, at
the time when I decided to start working as a translator, it seemed the
most obvious thing to do. Firstly, as far as I can remember myself, I always
took pains to express myself with the utmost precision in my native
language (i.e., I was always trying to find the right words). Since going to
school, I have had a keen interest in learning foreign languages (with the
view to understanding rather than to speaking them), so I've learnt several
before graduating from the Institute of Chemical Technology. Later on, as I
was doing a post-graduate course in programming, I found that I was much
more interested in "translation" from one machine language into another
than writing real programs. Secondly, I felt (for the above reasons)
that translation might be the one (and maybe the only) thing I was able to do
at a "better than the average" level. Thirdly, the decision-making was
made easy due to the collapse of the Russian system of "Science and
research institutes", so that there was virtually nothing left for me to do,
other than to switch over to technical translation. Fourthly, due to the
defects of school education, the great majority of Russians could not even
read in a foreign language at the time; at the same time, the demand for
technical and commercial translation was high and it was growing very fast,
so it was absolutely the best time to start. And, lastly, all these things
being taken into account, I was also fascinated by the idea of working from
home, according to my own time schedule, without the necessity of wearing
decent clothes and high-heeled shoes all the time, with no colleagues and no
bosses around. |
Q. What was the most critical or challenging situation as a translator and how did you manage it?
A. Luckily for me, I never had any absolute "no thoroughfares" in my translation work (this is probably because I am normally rather cautious about taking a job). I also managed not to make any very grave mistakes with serious consequences as yet. So, the worst thing that ever happened to me was working as a "secretary-interpreter" (I was using the opportunity to try how I liked it, and it took me three days to decide that it did not suit me at all; my employers being of the same opinion). I had tried several professions before that, and I had also done some oral interpreting, but it was only that one time that I have been able to attain such a level of incompetence. Worst of all, I absolutely did not know how to hand a cup of coffee to my boss (it proved to be the most embarrassing part of my professional duties - besides having any boss at all).
Q. What was the funniest event in your career as a translator?
A. Well: in a written translation, you sometimes make a very good joke without ever intending it: from a spelling mistake to an expression that drastically changes its meaning when (literally) translated into another language: A typical example was typing "posoRnyi" ("shameful", or "very low-quality") instead of "posoNnyi raschet" for "zone analysis". Unfortunately, I do not keep a record of all the good things I wrote, but this is where you can read a few very good ones (none of them are mine, though): http://trworkshop.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10127#10127 (The problem is that you must have some knowledge of Russian in order to fully appreciate the results.) I have made a lot of such translation bloopers myself during all these years, but I hope that none of them have leaked out to the clients (at least I don't know of any, since nobody had complained). |
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