Translator Astana

On  March, 16th -18th there was an exhibition Agritek 2011 which I visited as English interpreter for Mr. Vinter, area sales manager of a Danish company Unibolt A/S.

It was not the first time that we worked with Mr. Vinter and not the first exhibition that we visited. It’s been a year since we first started working and during that year we had a lot of meetings in Astana, Almaty, Moscow and other cities. I am also quite familiar with the Unibolt products given the fact that I did website translation into Russian for that company.
Unibolt A/S is a European leader in manufacturing bolts and other fasteners for agriculture machinery that is the reason why we met a number of agriculture companies at the exhibition that are potential customers of Unibolt. We also held meetings with other companies outside the fair.
We are planning yet another trip to Russia next week: in Moscow we will meet the head of a company that plays a big role in Russian agriculture market. We are looking forward to that trip and hope that it will be as successful as we expect it to be.

For a couple of months I’ve been involved in a JICA project first as an English-Russian translator of several documents, then as a Russian interpreter at the meetings.

A couple of years ago a huge projest was launched – construction of a new airport of Astana and remodeling of its runway and its facilities. Construction is done, so now the project has entered the  appraisal phase, that is why an independent consultant came to Astana to conduct a survey. That is how I met Mr. Yamaguchi. As I mentioned, first I did the written translation of a questionnaire and of several letters to International Airport Astana, so I got to know the vocabulary related to airport: apron, taxiway, aircraft boarding bridge and other words. Knowing those words was quite helpful when Mr. Yamaguchi arrived to Astana and held several meetings with the airport authorities.

Our first meeting was in the Ministry of Transport and Communication, in the Civil Aviation department, where Mr. Yamaguchi made a presentation of the purpose of his visit. Next  meeting we had was at the airport, where there were discussed issues related to the condition of some airport facilities and, specifically, of the apron. This meeting was followed by another one in the air traffic control tower. That visit was a very interesting experience for me because I got to see the operation of the airport from inside. It looked almost like in a movie when a controller spoke to pilots and gave them directions.  I was definitely amazed by the work of these people! This place has a restrict access to it so if I hadn’t been an interpreter I would have never entered that building. That is another agvantage of being an interpreter!

We continue working together with Mr. Yamaguchi, his next visit is expected in October, so I look forward to more meetings.