The Final Chapter?

My year abroad is over. After twelve months in Russia and Austria, it’s time to return to Durham to complete my university degree. It would be a lie to say I have loved every minute of the year (illness, injury and the threat of prosecution certainly don’t number among my favourite moments); but I have laughed far more than I have cried and discovered a wealth of human kindness. What more could I ask for?

I finished the year with an internship at Eclectic Translations. I was determined to go back to Russia for the summer and my single-mindedness finally paid off (apologies to my parents and to my friends in Innsbruck who bore the brunt of my obsessiveness). The internship was fantastic. I enjoyed everything from the walk to work along the river in the mornings and the time spent with my colleagues to the work itself – especially the variety.

It would hardly have been an internship at a translation company without doing some translation. I translated marketing materials, job contracts and dialogue for children’s cartoons, and in my last week I even translated the first chapter of a children’s book. All of this, I should point out, was from Russian into English. Apart from one occasion, when I was asked to translate an extract from Dickens into Russian in order to show why you should only ever translate into your own language. If you’ve ever seen a bad translation, you will understand.

I love languages and I love writing: translation should suit me down to the ground, right? To start with, I wasn’t so sure. It seemed to me that the words were not my own. I was translating someone else’s text. When I said this to Tal, however, he shook his head without hesitation. ‘I disagree,’ he said. ‘Every translator has his or her own style. When you translate, you put your voice on the page.’

I soon discovered that he was right. When you translate, you are not only conveying the message from one language into another, but also from one culture into another. This means there is sometimes even room for creativity. For example, in an episode of The Island, Olga accidentally dyes her hair blue and Mila calls her “Malvina”. But who’s heard of Malvina in the English-speaking world? I certainly hadn’t, so I did a quick Wikipedia search and discovered that she’s a china doll with blue hair. I would have to think of an equivalent. Blue hair, blue hair… how about Marge from the Simpsons?

As well as working with written translations, I learned how to edit subtitles and had a go at two different subtitling projects: a Russian comedy TV series called The Island and a ‘rap musical’ (see also: Are You Watching or Reading? The Secret to Subtitles). Translating rap turned out to be a very new challenge for everyone in the office. A bit like poetry, you’ve got to weigh up whether you translate the words or the rhythm and rhyme but… well, it’s a bit faster than poetry.

Having discovered that I like writing, Will also asked me to write for him: job advertisements, presentations and articles (no translation involved: the freedom of an empty page!); and then Will, a true wordnerd©, edited my work and gave me some surprising advice. ‘Print it out, turn it upside down, read it backwards,’ he said, and I laughed, but he was serious. ‘It works.’

The final week arrived far too soon. Stas, an intern from Oxford University and linguistic genius (he studies Arabic as well as Russian), left a week before me, and then it was my turn to leave – with an offer to have a go at freelancing.

On my last weekend I spent time with my colleagues: we drank wine after work on Friday and the next day we walked for hours, simply for the pleasure of walking and talking and spending time with each other. There’s no better way to get to know a city.

I didn’t want the day to end. I didn’t want to say goodbye. But I couldn’t stop time; all I could do was promise myself I would go back to St Petersburg again…