Unique Russian-to-English and English-to-Russian Translation Pedagogy Resource (original) (raw)

2018, International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Translating is an activity that can damage, distort, but, in some cases, also enhance and even improve upon the original text in terms of its cultural-esthetic impact on the reader. In the history of English-to-Russian translations of some classic English-language fiction there have been cases where the translations are arguably "better" than the originals. In other words, translation is a performative activity that can harm, hurt and enrage or engage, fascinate and enchant the reader. Probably because of its invisible ubiquity, misconceptions about translation among the general public abound. Those who think they know a foreign language are automatically assumed to be able to translate into and out of it. The question of whether such language users were ever formally taught to translate seldom arises. The question of how to teach teachers of translation is also hardly ever raised, at least in the American Academe. If one has been translating for a long time, s/he is generally considered "a professional translator." However, a "professional" translator is not necessarily an "expert" translator, the latter, in some significant cases, having to be doubly cognitively and "eruditionally" equipped as compared with the creator of the original text. I substantiate this thesis in my book What it Takes to be a Translator: Theory and Practice (Saarbrücken/Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2014). The popular psychology writer Malcolm Gladwell has come up with "the 10,000hour rule" which holds that it takes about 10,000 hours of "deliberate practice" in order to reach a world-class level in any field. Although the rule has never been scientifically tested and confirmed with reference to any particular language, I basically agree. Based on my own 50-year-long linguistic experience, I would argue that, starting from scratch, it is necessary to spend at least ten years (52 weeks x 10), engaging in "deliberate practice" of the four main language skills 4 hours a day 5 days a week, in order to achieve true advanced-level (in some cases, near-native) proficiency in a language like English. With reference to language, I prefer to talk about "a10year rule." Professor Dmitry Ivanovich Yermolovich of the Moscow Linguistic University is expertly proficient in his combined profession of translator, interpreter, translation instructor, lexicographer, and cross-cultural commentator. In his two-book Translation Manual, he charts a step-by-step route from an advanced command of English to a competent operation as a Russian-to-English "written translator." The Manual is designed for a twosemester course of 126 40-minute classroom periods and about as much time of independent work outside the classroom.