SlavFile Fall 2015 Vol. 24, No. 4 NEWSLETTER OF THE SLAVIC LANGUAGES DIVISION www.ata-divisions.org/SLD/slavfile.htm AN INTERVIEW WITH Sergei Chernov Deputy Chief Interpreter at the IMF and SLD’s 2015 Susana Greiss Distinguished Speaker Interview conducted by Nora Favorov On Thursday November 5, at the ATA Annual Conference in Miami, Sergei Chernov will deliv- er a talk titled “The Early History of Simultaneous Interpreting in the USSR and the West.” Mr. Chernov has a CV any aspiring Russian<>English interpreter would envy. Besides “coming by” his profession “hon- In this issue: estly” (as the son of UN interpreter, educator, and au- The Start of SLD’s Year of the Book thor Gheli Vassilyevich Chernov, a towering authority in the field of simultaneous interpretation), he gradu- Lynn Visson ated from both the United Nations Language Training Why the Books? ............................................................…. 5 Courses and the storied Maurice Thorez Institute of Lucy Gunderson Foreign Languages, both in Moscow. We thank him Administrator’s Column ................................................... 4 for consenting to be interviewed by SlavFile’s Nora Martha Kosir Favorov. The interview provides a more engaging Osti’s Poetry Slovenian > Spanish ..............................…. 8 overview of his career than this introduction can hope New Feature: WebWatch ............................................... 11 to, so we will let Chernov take it from here. Paul Makinen NF: You grew up around interpretation, List of Translators Associations in Croatia, Bosnia, being the son of Gheli Vassilyevich Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia ........................... 12 Chernov, a prominent figure in the world Yuliya Baldwin of simultaneous interpretation both at Как в аптеке: Russian Pharmacy Terms ...................... 13 the UN and “InYaz” (today, Moscow State Linguistic University). Did you always know Olga Shostachuk you would enter the field of interpretation, Sports Idioms in Court Interpreting into Ukrainian ...... 15 or did you consider other career paths? SlavFile Mailbox ............................................................. 19 SC: My father was a major influence on my career SlavFile Lite .................................................................... 20 choice. When I was in elementary school, he gave me ATA56 Slavic Events ....................................................... 25 the pocket English-Russian/Russian-English diction- SLD Banquet ................................................................. 27 ary that he had just published, autographed it, and told me to put it to good use. I have been trying ever since. When we lived in New York in the mid-1970s, I sometimes did my homework after school in an empty SOPHIE LUBENSKY (1935-2015) interpretation booth at the UN. This was my first con- Dictionary Author and 2014 Greiss Lecturer tact with the real world of interpreting, and as I lis- Obituary: Page 22 tened to my father and his colleagues working in the Russian booth, I began to realize how challenging yet rewarding this profession was. My career choice was pre-determined, and there was no going back, even when my classmates, who were children of diplomats, called inter- SLAVIC LANGUAGES DIVISION preters their “international slaves.” OFFICERS NF: Can you tell us a little bit about your biography Administrator: Lucy Gunderson [email protected] and how it shaped your interest in language? Assistant Administrator: Fred Grasso SC: I was born in New York in 1965, when my father was work- [email protected] ing at the UN and was only two when the family returned to the USSR, so my first memories are not of New York but of Moscow. SlavFile is published four times yearly. Moreover, my Soviet birth certificate stated that I was born in Articles of interest to Slavic translators and Moscow, and it was not until the early 1990s that I was able to re- interpreters are invited. ceive an American passport at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. In a Designation of Slavic Languages Division way, this story defines my attitude to the English language: I was membership on ATA membership application or renewal form born in the U.S. but with native Russian and acquired English provides full membership. (which I did not start learning until the age of seven). So, I have Write to ATA, 225 Reinekers Lane been working on my English all my life. I was very fortunate to Alexandria, VA 22314 spend my formative pre-teen and teenage years in New York, Submissions become the property of SlavFile when my father worked at the UN for the second time. Back in and are subject to editing. Moscow, my English high school teacher told me that I did not de- Opinions expressed are those of the authors serve good grades because my knowledge of the language was not and do not necessarily represent a result of my efforts, but only due to my privileged situation that the views of the Editor or of the Division. had allowed me to live in the U.S. Editor: Lydia Razran Stone NF: What advice do you have for U.S.-based [email protected] interpreters trying to keep pace with the rapidly Associate Editor: Liv Bliss evolving Russian language? [email protected] SC: I have been shuttling between Russia and the U.S. most Associate Editor: Nora Favorov [email protected] of my life. The irony is that when living in one country you sur- round yourself with an artificial environment (media, friends) of Associate Editor: Galina Raff (Russian, Layout) [email protected] the other country, and vice versa. For example, when I returned to Moscow from New York in 1980, I found myself in an informa- EDITORIAL BOARD tion vacuum and desperately scanned the short-wave radio un- Yuliya Baldwin til I found VOA. Imagine the look on the faces of my teacher and [email protected] classmates when I used the VOA news reports to talk about “cur- Svetlana Beloshapkina (Newcomers) rent events” at school: instead of describing the great successes [email protected] of the Soviet grain harvest, I talked about the American hostage Jennifer L. Guernsey crisis in Iran! Later, in the early 1990s in Moscow, I would have [email protected] my car radio tuned to Radio Maximum, the only FM station that Ekaterina Howard had English-language programming, and even got to know Cami [email protected] McCormick and other Americans who worked there. Katarzyna Jankowski (Polish) [email protected] Soon after my wife and I moved to Washington in 1993 and our son was born, we realized that we needed to create an environ- Martha Kosir (Poetry) [email protected] ment that would enable him to grow up bilingual, and I remember reading a lot of literature on childhood bilingualism. We created a Vladimir Kovner [email protected] strictly Russian environment at home, complete with satellite TV, Paul Makinen (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) Russian cartoons on VHS, Russian music in the car, i.e., the mir- [email protected] ror environment of what I had always tried to create for myself in Christina Sever Russia. [email protected] My advice to colleagues living in the U.S. and trying to keep Olga Shostachuk (Ukrainian) up with modern Russian is very simple: always finish your sen- [email protected] tences in the same language you start them, read, watch, and lis- Lynn Visson ten to as much Russian media as possible, and travel back often [email protected] – if not for work, at least on vacation. When working as interpret- Susan Welsh (Films) ers or translators, however, try to refrain from using those new [email protected] turns of phrase or flashy colloquialisms – in my view, it is almost SlavFile Page 2 Fall 2015 always better to use more conservative language than program or the Higher Courses for Interpreters – a the original speaker, unless you find yourself in very graduate program started by my father at InYaz – ef- specific situations (e.g., interpreting for show busi- fectively the first real interpreting school in the USSR. ness personalities). What you absolutely need to do, Being a biased graduate of the UN program, I am con- however, is to learn and understand all these neolo- vinced that our motivation to study was much more gisms or new acronyms correctly so that you do not powerful – a career at the UN awaited those who make the mistake a colleague made in the 1990s when graduated successfully. a Russian speaker talked about the difference between NF: How did your professional career bring the rule of law and mob rule (“жизнь по закону” vs. you to where you are today at the IMF? “жизнь по понятиям”), and the English interpreta- tion was something about “living by the notions.” SC: I graduated from the Maurice Thorez Institute in 1989 and the UN interpreting school in 1990, fully NF: What do you see as the comparative expecting that a coveted move to UN Headquarters strengths and weaknesses of interpreter in New York was right around the corner. History education in the U.S. and Russia? got in the way: the USSR was on the brink of col- SC: I am proud to say that I am about to find out – lapse, and the Soviet “rotation” system of interpret- this fall I will teach interpretation to the first group of ers in the Russian booth at the UN was falling apart. Russian-A students (those for whom Russian is their Interpreters whose tour of duty was ending signed dominant language) at the new Masters level T&I direct contracts with the UN Secretariat (not via the program at the University of Maryland! More gen- Soviet Foreign Ministry), and “my”