Translator's Melancholy

Is the life of a translator from to Russian and Italian so sad o it's my personal propensity to describe only the sad events in my translator's life? Well, my Friends, I don't know what to say. I'll tell you my last story and you decide...

My working activity was concentrated mostly here, in internet, after the New Year feast. I was too tired to climb all the local "mountains" with the tourists in those last weeks, honestly, and enjoyed sitting for the notebook working for one Italian Group that produces different foods such as macaroni, sauces etc. I worked very hard and, with my great  satisfaction, developed a very interesting strategy that can help them to conquest Russian Market with relatively limited investments.

In the mean period, my ex-boss called me, and I told him about this my new idea, my personal "invention". He was very enthusiast of it and, with his friend, decided to create a Ltd to take advantage of this huge money making possibility. He called his friend to join us and, now, his son, too.

I was happy. The credibility and the relations of my boss are enormous. I would never arrive at such picks even if I would do impossible.

I know that business is business, and it's a stupidity to share own ideas with anybody. You have only sell them. But, stupid old baby that is not able to learn from own and other's errors, I continue to believe in the honesty and good sides of the persons. What can I say you? I gave him all the important information of my project.

Now, they do not need me as a part of the project more. So, my role -if requested- will be limited to simple and low-paid translations...

There was a short episode in an old Italian movie, where the father makes his 4 years old son fall down from the table and says him
Nella vita non ti devi fidare di nessuno, neppure di tuo padre!
You have never trust anybody in the life, even me. It's my biggest gift to your birthday.

Translator - Universal Specialist

Translator is a very strange job, I have to say you.

I was very busy as a guide in the last period. You know just that many persons think you are a tourist guide if you speak this or that language. My guests are suret I know everything about all the Italy - not only I am able to guide them in every interesting place of Campania where I live. They ask me to go with them in Rome, in Apulia, in other places... I explain that I don't know tourist information about these places but they do not want to hear anything about it.


«Мыслитель» на Яндекс.Фотках 

Fortunately, I had to walk with them in Naples and Pompei, in Herculanum and Oplontis. But I worked all the feasts, even the New Year's eve I was in Pompei... They ask me sometimes: aren't you tired to tell every time the same things? If you think about it, I'll tell you the secret. I am never tired to visit the same places of Naples, of Campania for different reasons:

1. I like the history of Campania and read much about it. So, I know every time new information about every tourist object and it's interesting for me to tell what I know to the interested persons. It's not difficult because the scientists write many articles about the discoveries they do during the excavations in sites and in libraries. 
2.  The situation with the interesting sites in Campania is bad enough: the government does not find money to pay persons which could open all the objects. So, I find every time something new open.
3. Campania is beautiful and I like to walk here. 

And I could not relax after the stream of the tourists finished for some time. Because, after a period of the oblivion, my other clients, Italian industrialists, remembered that they would like to have Russian clients. So, they called me to the arms and I had to prepare new strategies of promotion of their goods.

Finished my work yesterday, I finally enjoy a day when I can to wwrite something for my pleasure... and to clean the house, too. :-)))

Translator means Investigator, too

If you think, I told you everything about the strangeness of translators' job, you are on the wrong way. The requests a translator living in a foreign country receives from time to time, would perplex anybody. So, about two weeks ago, an unknown man called me by cell and asked me to help him to find a missing person.

The young man argued with his girl-friend, she escaped in Italy, and he is worried she will not turn home to him.

We have strange behaviour with the persons we love. We do not respect them, we do not care enough about them. More close is our relation, worse are our conduct. We begin to understand something when the person we love is gone we think that forever.

In the case I write about, the woman probably went in Italy to visit her friends. But since she did not say anything about the voyage to her boyfriend, he thought, her cousins from Ucraina could advice her to remain there as a clandestine.

Source: keep.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Now, what was MY role in this story? I had to look for her.
He called me different times a day with every time new instructions and I had to speak with them trying to relax, to calm him for hours.

First, he asked me to call an organization she visited years before to see if she is in the same place.
Than, I had to call the cousin of the woman to send a message because the cousin could know where the woman is (and in fact she did).
Than, he asked me to hire an investigator
but after some hours he changed the idea and asked me to go personally in the town the woman probably is and to visit that just mentioned organization.
...
No, it was the last I could stand after more than a week.
I had to renounce.
I think, it's unpossible to earn all the money of the world. And prefer to avoid doubtful ventures.
Was I right?
I don't know.
But I like to sleep calm and relaxed without thinking more about this love story

Translation Services You Are Looking For

Translation Services offer different sites. Most of them are agencies, not so numerous are single translators. It's clear that a single translator has not so many possibilities of advertising, and it's hard for her to have last news of translating technologies. But it means that the prices can be much more accessible. Agencies write they offer two translators working with a text: one of them translates, other controls the finished translation. So, the client pays not only technologies but two translators, too.

The other benefit offered by the agencies is the great accuracy of the translation. Well, if the single translators work not so good, who are those translators that work for the agencies? Paradoxically, those are the same translators which work as single and as a part of the teams of all the agencies. Working as a single translator, they are not very reliable. Working as a part of an agency, the same translator becomes suddenly reliable.

No, it's simply interesting to observe. I do not try to change the things with this article: it's the way to exist and there is nothing to do. Business is business and competition is competition.

Sometimes, it's very important that the translator understands the hidden meaning of the stuff he translates. It's the case of "hidden knowledge", of instructions, for example, written for the persons who know what the text is about. The knowledge is not "hidden" as they say often. The author speaks to the persons which know the matter, and there is not a reason to explain it to them once more. Once those persons are dead, others can't interpret it. This is how the knowledge becomes "hidden".

The other case when it's good that the translator has "special" inspiration is poetry. A writer and poet can translate poetry differently. And there are many examples even when translation sounds better than original.

Translation Services, in this case, are really a combination of art and science.

Sometimes the automatic translation services are very high today. They even can recognize folks' ways of expression. And this is really a pleasant surprise for me since I have friends from different countries that speak very different languages and they suddenly can participate on the conversations in Russian, for example.

But, in any case, a human translator does not translate the words but the sense of the text and when an error in translation could damage health or things, it's always better not to experiment with danger. This is absolutely the case when the translation services have to come from a human translator.

Russian Italian Translations for the Tourists

What is the work of translator when he / she has to accompany tourists? How can it be distinguished from such jobs like guide and escort?

It's a good question.

Some days ago I worked with a family of tourists who wanted only to move more sure and quick in a foreign country. This means they wanted to have a person who speaks good Italian and Russian and knows the city to visit as much as possible in the daytime because it is night at 14:30 now.

So, practically, it's impossible to distinguish 3 jobs in this case.

But those are 3 different jobs for the law. And two of them have special certificates. If I want to do first or second, I have to wait that time when the governors decide to give out those certificates. And it's very possible that they will decide it when I'll pass the the best life.

The question is: what job I'm doing? And how can I prove that I'm working as a translator in this or that case?

My tourists were very content to see the city of Naples from it's different sides. They could see many places in one day, they could eat what they prefer to eat, because with the help of translator it was very easy to order what they like. Finally, when we went in the royal part of the city with all those shops on every step, I could finally go home. There is not need to have a translator nearby when someone visits shops. In these cases everybody wants to be alone. :-)))

Translating from English to Italian over Russian

My life of translator from to Russian is much more calm in confront to summer now. I just said this job is not "direct": do you think, you translate a text or a speech, a conversation and everything finishes here? You put your salary in your wallet and go home to enjoy your free time, you hope.
No, your clients pretend you know literally everything and will do it for them. If you are translator means you are a guide, too. And you know all the most impossible facts about all the things. If you are a translator, you are a middleman. No, not "a" but "the" middleman. Nobody can even imagine, those are completely different jobs and -according to the current laws- you, translator, can't do it...

Oh yes, you are right, I just repeat it in every post.

Well, my job is different in the last period. I have to translate texts from English to Italian.


Посмотреть на Яндекс.Фотках

Everybody knows, I'm Russian. It's very interesting to look at the persons that observe me listening to someone and writing what he is saying than. All the people wait, I'll write the speech in Russian and than translate it in Italian. When they see me writing directly in Italian, they become astonished and than ask me in embarrassment:
-What language are you writing in?
-Italian.
-Why don't you write Russian???
-Why Ш have?
-You are Russian!
-Well, but I need this text in Italian.
-Yes, but you are Russian!

So, you understood: if I'm Russian, think all the persons, I have to translate everything in Russian first!

We Need Translators At Every Step

«Я просто потихонечку живу...» на Яндекс.Фотках

We do not think about it but it's impossible to imagine modern life without translations. People all over the world use the same products, technologies which manuals are translated in hundreds of languages. These translations have to be made by alive translators because no one even the best technology can understand the sense of the sentences. We watch the same movies, read the same news. Even the food we eat comes from different parts of the world. And it's just enough to understand the importance of the translators' job.

Here are some other examples. I wanted to list all of them because even the professional translators do not realize the importance of what they are doing all their life. Not for complications of the idea or something like this but for it's simplicity.

Now, think a moment:
did you never support a team or a sportsman from other country? How would you know more about it/ him if you could not read about?

Did you ever support an opinion of a person from other country? Nelson Mandela or Obama that be. How could you understand the situation in the place your loved ones or Facebook friends live in?

Do you know somebody who follows a foreign religion? Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity or what other you just remember...

Now, you will smile... Where comes your LOOK from? Your clothes? Your hairstyle? In the last period, I've seen many girls with this hairstyle like in this video and like it very much



But the role of translator is much more important: the right or wrong translation can influence the decisions of the governments, of the military leaders. That is why is so decisive when the translator knows the country She / He works in. It's well known fact that all we have different uses, mentality. And, when the translator can't amortize the differences of understanding, it can lead to the great, really great problems.

What could happen when the meditians of one country where the outbreak of a dangerous disease happens could not communicate with the researchers from other countries? Not from one but from many different countries? What would happen if they would give wrong quantities of the medicine?

If you want to begin this business and you read about the problems you can meet on your way, in this blog, too, you could think it's not an important job to have so many sacrifices.

First of all, every beginning has more or less the same problems. In any case you have to tread on somebodies pet corn. There is not place where somebody is waiting for you. You have to make much to take your bread in the life. And butter on your piece of bread is the awareness you are doing something very important.