Translator Astana

Last month I spent in Paris both studying in Alliance Francaise and working for ALSTOM Transport.
Most of the time I work as an English-Russian interpreter in Astana  that is why I almost don’t practice my French. Working for ALSTOM in Astana changes that a lot, so French translation in Astana is more and more required. I decided to take some time off in Astana and go to Paris to refresh my French.
Courses of the French language in Alliance Francaise were very useful, we focused on grammar and also worked on our conversational skills. I also had access to the rich library of Alliance Francaise which comprised books as well as audio and video files. The best way of practicing the language was actually communicating with  the natives and living in the french speaking environment. There was also such thing as Polyglot Club where people from different countries gathered and could practice basically any language. Many people were interested in speaking Russian to me.
Since ALSTOM headquarters is in Paris, it is no wonder that I contunued my work as a Russian translator there as well. It was nice to meet people from ALSTOM in Paris with whom  I normally work in Astana.
By the end of my stay in Paris I got a request for Russian translation in Berlin. Berlinale film festival will take place  there in February, 10th-20th. Among other films that will compete for the prize, there will be presented a Russian film „Innocent Saturday“ and there will be interviews with the actors and film director, that is why a Russian-English interpreter in Berlin is required.
I look forward to that exciting assignment!

Since April I’ve been involved in two projects of ALSTOM TRANSPORT in Kazakhstan. These are two strategic projects: delivery of electric locomotive and construction of tramway line in Astana. I work mostly as a technical Russian-English translator, sometimes also as a Russian-French translator since ALSTOM is a French company.

The projects are very big so we had several working groups: technical, legal, financial. I mostly work in a technical group where we talk about electric locomotive manufacturing process, about its parameters and technical description. At the beginning I didn’t know much about „locos“ - as we call electric locomotives, I saw no difference between BoBo, double BoBo and CoCo locomotives, but step by step I was getting more and more into it. Now I know why it is that important for a locomotive to have an unbalanced lateral acceleration up to 1.0 m/s2 and what impact it has on the rails and on the locomotive bogie.

But it’s not always the technicians that I translate. Sometimes we have a hectic schedule and after interpreting at the technical meeting, I have to run to a finanical one, where specialists discuss cash flow, overheads and structure of Joint Venture. I also became familiar with the notions such as P&L, CAPEX and OPEX. I might also translate at a legal meetings where I deal with words as precedent conditions, preemptive right and fundamental breach.

Everybody involved in the project worked quite hard, often without days-off and working long hours but it was worth it – on the 27th of October, 2010 in Paris there was signed the Contract by the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the President of France. Now the project is officially launched which means we have more work ahead!

Translation for the OSCE Secretary General seems to be impossible in Astana, but this is not true. Secretary General of OSCE, M. Marc Perrin de Brichambaut came to Astana for the Congress of leaders of world and traditional religions.
The state broadcasting station „Kazakhstan“ had the privilege of interviewing the Secretary General. I was asked to translate for M. De Brichambaut.  There was  the agreement with the press center that the interview would be done in English, but since M. De Brichambaut is French, I translated from Russian to French and vice versa.
The atmosphere was very friendly. We swichted  to English for the official part of the interview. I translated from Russian to English the questions of the journalist and the responses of M. De Brichambaut. He  made remarks about the Congress that was being  held in Astana, he also shared his thoughts about the forthcoming chairmanship of Kazakhstan in OSCE.  At the end of interview the Secretary General wished all citizens of Astana a happy 11th anniversary of the city.
The interview was quite short but very intensive. After the official part I switched back to French and we talked for a while. M. De Brichambaut assured us that this was not his last trip to Kazakhstan and that he would be coming back again and again. He was willing to have an open dialogue between OSCE and Kazakhstan. Hopefully, we will be following the news related to the presidency of  Kazakhstan in OSCE.
Chairmanship in OSCE in 2010 has a great value to Kazakhstan, so does the translation for the Secretary General to me.

Translation of excursions in Astana is a great deal nowadays as not many tour guides speak English, French or any other foreign languages. The situation will probably change in the course of the next couple years as a new generation is getting more and more multilingual and there won’t be any need to translate what the tour gide says.

Last summer an international economic forum was held in Astana that was the reason wny there were many foreigners in Astana. After an official part of the forum the guest were eager to explore our city and to find out more about its history. Our small team (a bus-driver, a russian speaking tour guide and me) drove up to the hotel where all the guests stayed and we started our excursion stright away.

There were guests from CIS who spoke russian and those from USA, India and China who needed russian-english translation so we arranged the process of excursion this way: first a tour guide Elena gave us some information about this or that sight-seeing in russian and after a while I did the translation.

So we started with a new part of the city, drove by Baiterek (a symbol of Astana), went to the Pyramid (a very famous building made by a Normann Foster’s project), saw a residence of our president Nursultan Nazarbaev, crossed the river and found ourselves in an old part of Astana, came up to its historical center and continued our excursion at the museum of the first president of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

It was my first translation of an excursion so it was very useful that I prepared for the work: found out lots of information about our city and translated it into English. That was also very good that just couple months before the excursion I had a course „Theory of interpreter’s note-taking“ and I was ready to manage with all figures, names and places that should either be remembered or written down in order to be able to make an adequate translation.

Our excursion was very interesting and productive: even I who was born in Astana learnt many new things about it, so did the guests I hope. I also hope they really enjoyed our city and will come to Astana over and over again.

• Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.

Anthony Burgess

• Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

• Translators can be considered as busy matchmakers who praise as extremely desirable a half-veiled beauty. They arouse an irresistible yearning for the original.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

• Translation is at best an echo.

George Borrow

• The original is unfaithful to the translation.

Jorge Luis Borges

• Translation quality assessment proceeds according to the lordly, completely unexplained, whimsy of “It doesn’t sound right”.

Peter Fawcett

• Translators live off the differences between languages, all the while working toward eliminating them.

Edmond Cary

• Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.

Yevgeny Yevtoushenko

• Many critics, no defenders,

translators have but two regrets:

when we hit, no one remembers,

when we miss, no one forgets.

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