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Russian translator in Milan for Expo 2015

June 30th, 2015

In June 2015 I was lucky to be invited to Milan as an English-Russian interpreter for Expo 2015. Kazakhstan participates in the Expo 2015 and its pavillion is one of the most popular ones. On June,27th Kazakhstan celebrates its National day: a big official delegation from Astana came to Milan, Kazakhstan’s pavillion was visited by several high-level delegations from other countries, including one from Italy headed by its Prime-Minister. I was there to provide translation services from English to Russian and vice versa.

Snejana Skakovskaya Translator at EXpo 2015 in Milan

Together with the Kazakh delegation I had a chance to visit other pavillions, for example UAE pavillion, the country to host Expo 20202. Some other impressive pavillions were those of Germany, Japan, Azerbajan, etc.
Unfortunately I didn’t have much time for visiting other pavillions as I was mainly involved in the negitiations in the Kazakh pavillion between different delegations.
Celebration continued with a big concert which starred famous Kazakh dancers, singers, craftsmen. The idea of the National Day is to show a country’s culture and in the case of Kazakhstan also get people intetersted in visiting Expo 2017 in Astana.
Eventful but short trip to Italy came to an end and so I am headed home for more translation work in Astana.

English Interpreter for INNO Group Seminar

April 10th, 2011

Recently I came back to Astana from a business trip to the regions of Kazakhstan. National Innovation Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan organized a seminar that was held in all the cities of the country to which I was invited as an English interpreter for the experts from INNO Group (Sweden).

English Interpreter  for seminar

First seminar was held in Karaganda and was followed by a number of seminars in Aktau, Atyrau, Kostanay,Uralsk, etc. In 8 days we covered 7 cities which meant one flight a day.

The seminar touched upon issues like transfer of technology, licencing, patenting, intellectual property and the like. Target group of the seminar was university professors and scientists who come up with inventions and should know how to introduce these inventions to the market and how to protect their intellectual property.

INNO Group is a German company with offices all over Europe that has a 20+ years of experience in the field of transfer of technology. The whole concept is quite new in Kazakhstan, that is why it was very important to listen to the experts and to participate in the seminar. INNO Group experts, Mr. Biorkman and Mr. Grankvist, in the course of the seminar among other things aslso had a couple of case studies which made the seminar very interactive and dynamic.

We were warmly welcomed in every city and every university, we visited a laboratory in Kostanay where we we shown the latest inventions of the university scientists. All in all it was a very nice and interesting trip, I have definitely learned a lot about innovations and transfer of technology, business incubators and copy rights, business angels and validity of patents. There is another series of seminars planned, so I hope that my list of newly acquired  knowledge will be even longer!

Interpreting at the Ministry of Agriculture -Part 2

March 20th, 2010

It is always nice to see people that I have already translated for coming back to Kazakhstan. This was the case with the representatives of INKOA company. They needed to specify several things regarding the future contract, so that means that I was translating at the Ministry of Agriculture again.

Interpreter Astana

Similar to the previous time we worked long hours but our work was rewarded-we are now one step closer to singing the contract. This time I had to deal with technical part of the contract, such as the number of greenhouses, crop rotation, wind and snow resistance. I also translated from English to Russian and vice versa both legal and financial sides of the contract. And here was the tricky part: we were talking about the taxes which are very different in Kazakhstan and in Spain. I have learned a lot about Corporate Income tax, Branch Income tax, and others.

Being an interpreter is not easy, that I can be honest about. While there were 3 people, each knowing his or her sphere, I had to be an expert in all spheres. That means I have to know at least something about everything. That is why I enjoy my work so much. I really do.

So this assignment is over for the next month or so and hopefully next time I wil write about singing the contract!

Negotiations at the Ministry of Tourism and Sport

February 28th, 2010

The whole week I’ve been translating negotiations at the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, where the Vice Minister Uskenbaev had meetings with Judith Luscomb, the representative of the Buzz Buziness, the film production company.

English interpreters of kazakhstan

There was made an offer to make a documentary film on Kazakhstan which would show the country in all its beauty, both in winter and in summer. The documentary would touch various topics, such as history and religion, handcrafts and culture, adventures and ecotourism, local traditions and kazakh food. There was elaborated a very detailed plan of filming and Vice Minister as well as the Committee Chairperson seemed to like the idea.

At the next meeting they went into more details about tender processing and legal issues. With such a big project one should take every detail into consideration. My translation went rather smoothly since I am quite familiar with the tender processing in Kazakstan. The next day we met with the chief accountant and went through the whole project again, this time focusing on figures.

While translating presentation from English to Russian I was thinking about interpreter’s role in negotiations. Not only should he/she translate word for word thus delivering the message, it is also extremely important to use the right intonation, gestures, smiles and pauses. What the outcome of the negotiations would be if the presentation is done perfectly in English but it looks pale when translated into Russian because of an interpreter? So I came to a conclusion that an interpreter should also know the bacics of marketing and branding, as well as pchycology. It’s not only the matter of language skills, it’as also about the right personality.

With Judith we also did some shopping because she was interested in purchasing some traditional kazakh clothes. Hats were her favoutire item 🙂 Well, kazakh traditional hats are something!

I also did some written translation for Judith since she needed me to translate some official letters to the Ministry. In general it was a very exciting assignment since the topic – mass media- was both familiar and interesting.