Translate Me If You Can

Игорь Николаевич Евтишенков

В данном сборнике собраны цитаты из интервью и выступлений Президента РФ на конференциях, встречах и совещаниях в период с 2000 по 2017 гг. Они представляют собой яркий пример нестандартных ситуаций, в которых переводчикам обычно приходится решать сложные задачи по подбору идиоматических, метафорических и сленговых выражений, обобщать и заменять высказывания, непонятные для иноязычной и инокультурной аудитории, на те, которые лучше всего передавали смысл «живой речи».

PREFACE

These collected quotations contain quotes from interviews and speeches of the President of the Russian Federation at conferences and meetings between 2000 and 2017.

They represent a vivid example of non-standard situations, in which interpreters usually have to solve complex problems of selecting idiomatic, metaphorical and slang expressions, generalising the idea and common sense. They then have to replace phrases incomprehensible to foreign audiences and their cultural environment, by those, which best convey the real meaning of «living speech» «everyday speech». The work of an interpreter often remains behind the scenes. Preparation for consecutive and simultaneous interpretation always begins long before the event begins.

However, if the situation does not develop as planned, then the use of lexicon goes beyond the presumed preliminary templates. We remember with gratitude those scholars who helped us to master our specialty. They openly shared their experiences, telling cases from their own practice, citing examples written in notebooks, on scraps of newspapers and, more often, on packs of cigarettes, laughing at the curious, unexpected translations they had made during negotiations of different levels. They did not hesitate to talk about the mistakes that had been made at the very beginning of their work and even in the mature years. For example, in a restaurant an attaché asked to translate the song «Who knows why he’s giving a wink [at me]», and this literal translation followed: «No one knows what’s wrong with his eyes».

The peculiarities of cultural development and the use of idioms as well as stable expressions stand in translation practice, perhaps in the second place after the ability to generalise. It is quite natural that even professionals can make mistakes in certain situations. For example, there was «a working dinner» after a long working day and there was an informal atmosphere, so a young interpreter relaxed and translated the phrase «We are looking forward to your reply» as «We will be impatiently waiting for your reply».

You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, so there is a hope that this collection will be of the same great help to everyone who knows and learns English and strives for permanent professional self-improvement, as once the notes and records of our teachers did.