I decided: stop chasing projects, have a break to think things over, follow your instinct and the rest of your life chase your dream.  I am approaching a definite age when people are supposed to be good at what they do or at least came to a point to change their lives.  I definitely have experience (negative and positive), I am curious and open-minded for possibilities.  As a matter of fact I have even more ideas than I had before. All kinds of good deals in software programmes will make my work easy and pleasant, memberships will open all possible doors to me and so on and so forth. But dear me, is it what I want? Few respectable translators give the rest of us their valuable advice, first, to find out what we want, second, have a good look around and set all your ability of research and good luck  to find a right employer.  And the world is hard. You are alone. The more experience you get under the supervision of an experienced partner the better.

What is quality? Honesty, communication, good timing, respect. Hard work. Art work.

It is good to believe that you are one of a kind.

I do believe in beauty of the language. So I work on translation of a book I loved when I was at  school. It is getting better now. I do not think it will be perfect because people will always look for mistakes or think different about the same thing. My goal is to deliver a message without naming it.

I also believe that my goal to find a mentor and like-minded person for future big and exciting projects will come true. I am looking for an employer who will trust me and will give me some space to develop into a good in-house translator.

Copy writing in English, Russian and Dutch is another option. I have accumulated heaps of written materials in Russian and English.

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I watch the developments of the situation on the translation scene. From one side, there is a growing demand in professional translators, especially Russian translators; from the other side, the rates are growing down. The reason partially is in possibility to grab a student from the street to cut expenses. I wonder where the boundaries are? And what happens to a professional translation?

In Scotland recently translation companies have undercut market rates to win the contracts to supply interpreters to Scottish courts and other government services. A court interpreter said the new conditions meant interpreters were effectively being forced to work for less than the minimum wage. It takes many years of practice and training to get to a level that is sufficiantly competent to carry out intricate work in a high pressured environment like court. A lot of interpreters and translators are forced out of the profession because of the low rates of pay.

For better value for money and greater efficiency a professional translator should be engaged.

I, as a professional English Russian translator, am supposed to provide a high quality translation, carry out all the stages of translation myself and as a result to receive less than a minimum payment. I think, OK, at least I have an experience and I am in demand. But I would rather take part in projects for non-profit organisations for free. At least I have a feeling of fulfillment and commitment. And I do what I personally love – translating from English to Russion and from Russian to English.

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There are few interesting tendencies to observe in today’s post.

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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One of the tendencies in translation business is putting too much faith in translating machines and too little faith in the best reference resource, native language speakers. That the best translation programs may still mangle 20 to 30 percent of a text is no reason to abandon machines altogether. Take advantage of what they’re good at: translating obscure terms and speedily producing rough-draft renditions of sentences, paragraphs and bigger chunks of text. The tricky part comes once the machine is through, of course: you have to separate the wheat from the chaff – that is, отделить пшеницу от мякины, according to the Russian translation quickly found using Yahoo’s free Babel Fish translator.

As a well-known phrase with Biblical roots, “wheat from chaff” wasn’t much of a challenge for the program – and was easy  to back-check. But what about the Russian-to-English rendering of an everyday, highly idiomatic phrase, the kind a machine might easily mess up – like “Как ты меня достал!”, for example, which should come out “I’ve had it with you!”, “Enough already!” or something similar?

Babel Fish renders it “As you reached me!”, alas – but how can a Russian speaker quickly determine that this is off base? In this case apply another “program”: native English speakers or bilingual translators.

Cross-checking must be done judiciously, of course, as many cases are quite subtle or tricky.

All right, machines can do wonders for your translation powers if you check your expectations and back-check your results.

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