Orenburg state university

Not Craft, but Art

In the frames of Translation Days Event in OSU the interpreters Rustem Galimov and Vladimir Leontyev organized the meeting with the students of Philology and Journalism Faculty.

Rustem welcomed people in German and Vladimir greeted the audience in eight languages. On the meeting the students learned how interpreters begin to translate fiction and which stages the book passes before publication. Also they got acquainted with works of famous polyglots.

The guests asked a lot of questions, for example about possibility to learn several languages independently and received affirmative answer. Vladimir Leontyev specified that he knew English, German and French by the university time and started to learn Japanese in middle age.

Both interpreters agreed in opinion that work with fictions is not craft, but art.

— It isn’t enough to know a foreign language to make a good job, it is necessary to know national language faultlessly and be able to expound thoughts artistically, — Rustem specified.

On the same day the documental film "One woman and five elephants" was shown; this film is about life history of interpreter Svetlana Gayer. The heroine calls novels of Fedor Dostoevskiy — five elephants, translated it from Russian to German. The movie of Vadim Endreyko was released in 2009 and became the participant of more then 70 festivals worldwide. The students and lecturers of OSU German Philology and Teaching Methods Department wholly appreciated the movie.