Russian translators are perfectly familiar with the controversies of Russian spelling rules. Nowadays the phonetic and grammatical principles are applied to define a complicated set of spelling rules. Some are related to the ‘relationship’ of series of vowels to hard/soft pairs of consonants. Voiced consonants are devoiced word-finally unless the next word begins with a voiced obstruent. Russian features a general assimilation of voicing and palatalization. The process of voicing assimilation applies across word boundaries when there is no pause between words. To be aware of those rules is crucial for a translator to avoid confusion and embarrassing mistakes.
Well, I have no intention today to explain all those rules as for a Russian translator they are pretty evident, and besides we remember the language and not the rules. We just use it, that’s all. But in my experience I still have some accidents in using commas or not; which punctuation mark belongs here or there.

Granted, in some “mechanical” cases commas are used in English where they aren’t in Russian, including: certain date renditions (“My daughter was born June 17, 1993.”); within large numbers (1,700,000); to introduce direct quotation (“He shouted, ‘Boo!’”); and in friendly letter salutations (“Dear friends,”).

In English, dependent clauses starting with “that,” “what,” “if,” “where,” “when” and the like DON’T want commas before them. And “because” doesn’t need a comma before it but “потому что” often does.

A subject clause, even a lengthy one, ordinarily doesn’t take a comma after it – although its translation into Russian probably will.

The “which” which starts a restrictive subordinate clause doesn’t need a comma. The point: a который clause in English should not produce a comma reaction.

So for me it means that every time I want to put a comma automatically I don’t do that. How cool is that? Although it works in English and in Russian I just have to follow my intuition.

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Translating industry is found healthy. It means that demand for translators and interpreters is expected to grow by 15% in the coming year as globalization, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide green movement spur demand for information in myriad languages.

E-mail, Skype and other technologies have opened the door to cross-cultural communications, but they alone cannot bridge the language gap.

I perfectly realize that there are a lot of us translators there. But there are quite a few real professionals. It’s not enough to simply speak another language. There is a wealth of knowledge and background you need in your area of specialty.

Translation is far more than words and also far more than the context of words and phrases. Very many different issues are involved. And the spelling has to be impeccable.

Some businesses try to save on translation fees by using free computer programs, but those don’t offer the quality needed to avoid stilted and often nonsensical results.
Slavic grammar is complex, and developed differently than in other Indo-European languages, which means that sentences have to be construed in a very different manner.

The Russian language is full of words of intimacy or endearment. First, the Russian national character is expressive and emotional, and one aspect of it is that it has so many diminutive adjectives and nouns; second, the language itself offers a variety of ways to be expressive and emotional. One of them is suffixes. Russian is sometimes called the language of suffixes.

Russian suffixes express an extremely wide range of emotions and attitudes. They can produce words that are caressing, diminutive, familiar, vulgar or contemptuous.

Polish linguist Anna Wierzbicka studied the way Russian suffixes work with Russian personal names. She says the meanings expressed by names with suffixes are so rich and complex they cannot be represented by simple labels such as “affectionate” or “scornful”. Some are ambivalent.

The suffix -ka (as in Lenka) may express familiarity or “anti-respect” but it becomes diminutive and even caressing in Lenochka.

The suffix –ik/ok is used with diminutive connotation when used with masculine names, e.g. Vladik or Sashok.  People use it when they talk to small boys and till they approach adolescence.

In English, suffixes are rarer, and they are less expressive. Most commonly, standard short forms such as Tom or Bill are used with regard to people one knows well. Sometimes, such short forms are preferred by the person and are used officially like Jimmy or Billy.

Translators of fiction face enormous problems rendering the expressive range conveyed by Russian suffixes. The mysterious craft of translation: it has to emerge from the whole — one must see it as a whole, and love it as a whole.

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