The subtle art of translation: The Winter School on Translation and Interpreting at St Petersburg University

‘St Petersburg University has held the School on Translation and Interpreting since 2020. The school has always received a huge amount of positive feedback, so the project continues to develop, each time expanding the range of topics and languages ​​covered,' said Svetlana Rubtsova, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​at St Petersburg State University, in her welcoming speech.

‘Our event is becoming more and more large-scale, bringing together people who are enthusiastic about translation, interpreting, and foreign languages: academic staff, students at different levels of education, professional translators and interpreters, and representatives of businesses,' she said. ‘Our principle is to invite not only well-renowned scholars and professional translators and interpreters with extensive experience, but also early-career colleagues, who may not yet be so experienced in public speaking, but are sincerely ready to share their experience in our new reality.'

Director of the School of Translation and Foreign Languages ​​at St Petersburg University Kseniia Anisimova spoke about non-degree programmes in the field of translation and interpreting. Detailed information about each programme can be found on the website.

This year, there was a rich programme featuring various lectures. Colleagues shared their views on various aspects of translation and interpreting. Experts discussed the specifics of translation and interpreting in their language pairs. Additionally, they expanded their professional contacts via participating in sections covering 13 Western and Eastern European languages and Oriental languages. Since 2022, three new areas have been introduced: Portuguese, Bulgarian, and Turkish.

We are convinced that, despite some pessimistic forecasts about the future of the field of translation that are primarily associated with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, high-calibre translators and interpreters will always remain much in demand. This is because all subtleties of translation and interpreting are an art that is not within the scope of artificial intelligence.

Svetlana Rubtsova, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​at St Petersburg University

The plenary session was opened by Natalia Gavrilenko, Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages ​​of the RUDN Academy of Engineering and Head of the School of Translation Didactics. Talking about how the translation profession has changed, she told the participants about the fact that today the number of possible translation industries has grown significantly: a university graduate can work in the field of audiovisual or industry translation; or become a project manager, terminologist, localiser, cross-language manager, and digital linguist to name just a few.

The model of how we teach translation and interpreting has changed over the years. In the 20th century, two different schools developed in Europe and Russia. The Western European school train translators and interpreters from a foreign language into their native language. Their task is to train translators and interpreters to understand the source text. The Eastern European school follows a linguistic approach: any text should be considered in a communicative situation, and a translator or interpreter should convey the communicative function of the text.

When in 2007 the famous School of Translators at Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris 3 (L'École Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs) celebrated its 50th anniversary, one of its famous representatives Daniel Gile, addressing his colleagues, suggested looking back to the East and combine two translation traditions.

Natalia Gavrilenko, Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages ​​of the RUDN Academy of Engineering, Head of the School of Translation Didactics

'Today we are witnessing how these schools are being integrated. The European school takes into account all advancements of the linguistic school, which particularly focuses on correspondences between native and foreign languages,' said Natalia Gavrilenko.

Aleksey Kozulyaev, Head of the RuFilms Groups and one of the most-recognised experts in audiovisual translation, spoke about how modern technologies affect the audiovisual translation market.

‘Traditionally, with the advent of machine translation, there has been introduced major changes to the profession of translators. Yet it is far from being able to change the content of work in our industry due to the polymodality of audiovisual works: films and video games. Neurotechnologies involving artificial intelligence are becoming truly disruptive, changing the essence of the profession for us,’ noted Aleksey Kozulyaev. 'However, audiovisual translators do need to be afraid of them, as it will be a side-by-side existence. Rather, they should expand relevant professional competencies.'

Modern audiovisual translators need to learn how to interact with various manifestations of artificial intelligence. Even now, various voice assistants, such as Siri or Alexa, are seriously influencing the viewing of audiovisual works, suggesting to viewers what they should choose to watch.

Film annotations are customisable based on the user's previous preferences, so the translation of these personalised texts must be flexible enough to be easily modified for another person.

Another challenge is translation of metadata contained in audiovisual works in virtual, augmented and game realities. In video games, they are present as windows with information about a certain object or another player. In films, they appear as subtitles, which in the era of multiplatform should also be flexible. Today, viewers easily switch between different devices. Many people start watching a film on a smartphone screen on their way to work or school, and when they return home, they turn their TV on and automatically continue watching it from where they left off. The difficulty for the translator is that the perception of subtitles varies depending on the size of the screen. It is therefore necessary to create different text tracks: the ones that are compressed for a smartphone and more detailed ones for a TV; and to be able to adjust the transition between them.

Aleksandra Matrusova is a professional simultaneous interpreter, a teacher of Russian as a foreign language and Associate Professor at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. She shared with the audience tips on creating a CV and portfolio. When applying for a job, a translator or interpreter often has to solve a lot of questions: what languages you should write your CV; whether you should mention all customers; what events must be listed; how to prove that you understand all topics you are working with. There is no universal answer. In this regard, you should have several CVs adapted to different requirements.

Aleksandra Matrusova explained that over time, each translator or interpreter starts to specialise in a certain topic, gradually deepening into it, and this profiling can be important for the customer. For example, if you work in the field of medicine, you may be asked how well you understand cardiology, up to whether you can translate a text about minimally invasive interventions with localisation on the left ventricle. When a novice translator gradually gains experience in various narrow areas, it must therefore be systematised in order to be able to include it in different versions of their CV.

There is another difficulty for an interpreter. A customer might ask to send a sample of the voice. This trend is relatively new to the market, as now almost everyone has the opportunity to quickly record their speech on the phone. Employers have become more demanding. Today, when selecting an interpreter for a particular project, many report that they would like to see not just an experienced specialist with good diction, but a person with a certain pronunciation, timbre and voice pitch. The interpreter should therefore find out what sample the customer needs: a recording of simultaneous interpreting, consecutive interpreting, off-screen translation or a video fragment of the work in the booth. 'This is an important point to be clarified, but if you have started working as an interpreter, it is important to record yourself regularly. This is how you get samples of your translation, which you can later provide to the customer and use to analyse your work,' said Aleksandra Matrusova. 'For example, when I feel that very few people listen to my translation at an event, I turn on the recorder. This mobilises me, because I understand that later I will listen to myself and analyse.’ In addition, many events are now taking place online, so you can include links to broadcast recordings in your portfolio.

Additionally, there were workshops on consecutive interpreting, simultaneous interpreting, and literary translation for experienced professionals and early-career translators and interpreters.