Everybody is following the collisions in the web. Two media: internet and publishing business are watching each other and waiting for any blunder from each other’s side to grasp the situation and act immediately. If there is an article missing in a magazine; there is an immediate campaign on internet to publish the notorious article in translation, so that the readers can still read it.

So you can see the words ‘Russian translation’ everywhere nowadays. Russia achieved the pick of its popularity; I mean there is a lot of interest in what happens in Russia. It arouses many questions. So I guess, that Russian translators, like myself, are facing a new era.

And another tendency.

As the world gets smaller, readers are turning toward foreign fiction to understand other viewpoints. Far from being just the province of small independent publishing houses, literature in translation has become a mainstream phenomenon, with books that inspire huge bidding wars and literary debates.

There are very talented works of today’s young Russian writers, who speak modern Russian life to the world. And their stories are not lost in translation. Smart translation.

It is nice to believe, that people’s interest in Russian modern literature is growing. So the question is: can a philosophical novel, exploring the question of whether good can exist without evil, like “The Master and Margarita” be translated in such a way that it reads smoothly and fluidly like a bestseller?

Can we talk about a new translation, when, each phrase used in it appeared easily accessible and had a good rhythm. The characters are readily distinguishable from one another.

And the last but not the least. The top 10 countries ranked by Common Sense Advisory’s report “Countries That Matter Most Online in 2009″: U.S., Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, China and Australia. The top 10 languages that provide the biggest bang for a business’ buck are: English, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Russian and Swedish.

Even in far New Zealand there is a growing interest in the Russian phenomenon. I happened to be one of the first readers of the science fiction novel where the author tries to penetrate the Russian psyche in order to understand the modern history of the western mankind. The translation of this talented book would become a highlight of my carrier as a translator.

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