Irena Kirilova

ISBN 5-ЧЗЧЗЧ-ОЬЧ-З

World of Interpreting and Translation

СЕРИЯ «МИР ПЕРЕВОДА»

К. Петренко, А. Чужакин

Transcript to Audio Course

"Top Translators Talk on Tape" Ключи к аудиокурсу

(Составлены при участии А.Маганова)

Москва

«Р.Валент»

Содержание

Таре 1 Side A Irena Kirilova (UK) talks about her

background, bilingualism, Russian cultural

heritage as well as Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn,

Akhmatova, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the

challenges of interpreting for them all.

P-3

Tape 1 Side В Pavel Palazchenko (Russia) speaks on the Cold War last summits, advent of

Gorbachev, meetings with Reagan, Bush,

challenges of interpreting at the top level,

and the history he has witnessed.

P- 17

Tape 2 Bruce Boeglin (France) and his views on Side A interpreting vs. translation, his World War II experiences, and UN work, the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia, unrest in Burundi and Rwanda as well as the role of interpreters in the battlefield.

P. 32

Tape 2 Aleck Toumayan (US) narrates about the Paris Side В peaсе talks in 1968-1971, the US hostage —crisis in Iran, shares his intimate glimpses of Reagan, Johnson and Nixon during his thirty year stint at the US Department, and tells a couple of funny stories.

P. 47

© К. Петренко, А. Чужакин, 2001 © BBC World Service © «Р.Валент», 2001

Отрывки из серии передач At The Shoulder of History BBC World Service предоставлены П.Палажченко

IRENA KIRILOVA

I.K. Nearly all the men in my family were soldiers. When the revolution came, my grandfather and my uncle both found themselves in the thick of the civil war and the White movement. But my parents found themselves in the port of Vladivostok, and in 1919 early in the year a telegram came from Trotsky, the so-called Commissar for war, ordering all, as it said, former officers of the former Imperial Army... they were to be arrested. Fortunately, there were one or two officers' wives working in the telegraph office, or the post office. They delayed delivery of that telegram for 24 hours, and in the meantime anybody who could leave did leave.

Cor. Irena Kirilova is a British citizen, but her Russian inheritance is one of which she |s very conscious and very proud. It may not at all seem obvious that she would join a very special profession which is the subject of this series — the interpreters. But like several others I've talked to she found herself at the shoulder of history almost by accident. Since she was born and brought up here, I wondered when we met, if she felt British or Russian.

I.K. My parents belong to that group of Russians who believe that they had to pass on, first of all, their own language, their own culture, what they lived by. So both my brother and I grew up speaking Russian first, and we then added English, and, as it happened, French because we were sent to a French lycce.

Cor. So you are bilingual from the very beginning. Did you thus foresee your future career as a linguist?

I.K. Not specially. The prime consideration was you've got to get onto a good university course. So first I and then my brother read French and Russian at Oxford.

Cor. So how did you become an interpreter? I.K. By accident. I had come down from Oxford, was working in London, doing some teaching. I was also quite active in a wonderful institution called the Pushkin Club, which had been founded by a Russian woman, who was married to a former High Commissioner for Refugees. She believed that in the thaw period after the death of Stalin there were two wings of Russian culture, in other words, what was still Russian culture, what had been allowed to survive, what was coming to the fore again in the Soviet Union. And the Russian culture that was still personified, so to speak, by a number of remarkable members of the old White emigration; that there should be a place a forum to start meeting again, and for the British listener to be able to come and to hear. And one day we were expecting Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, who was one of Diaghilev's painters, to come and read excerpts from his autobiography. Now, he had obviously been writing in Russian, but his publishers had promised him that section which had already been translated. Well, either the translator or the publishers somehow didn't quite come up to the deadline. And Dobuzhinsky arrived, looking rather charming and rather helpless, and saying, 'Here is my text.' And that text was in Russian, in his handwriting.

And if ever it was a case of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread, that was it. Somebody said: 'Oh, haven't you got somebody with both languages who could perhaps translate this?' Now, the fact that one may be bilingual is not a proof that one's going to be able to interpret a text in one language correctly and meaningfully into another. But, I was young, I was foolish, I was obviously the person, who was being fingered in this way. And I discovered to my amazement, that he would speak a long paragraph, and I was able to do what is known as a consecutive interpretation immediately afterwards. That was how I began interpreting.

Cor. Given the wide political spectrum that attended those meetings at the Pushkin Club, there must have been some very volatile moments, if say you were going to discuss the works of Pasternak, for example?

I.K. Yes. There was one very memorable occasion, if memorable is quite the right word. A particularly big and in some ways important delegation of Soviet writers had come to this country. It was headed by a man called Aleksey Surkov who was the then secretary of the Union of Soviet Writers and had been instrumental first in well, certainly harassing if not hounding the then already sick Pasternak, and who [Surkov] was certainly the instrument that the Soviet government used to forbid Pasternak to go and receive the Nobel Prize for literature that he had been awarded. And who later just before the visit of this delegation had also been instrumental in packing away Pasternak's — Pasternak's just died mistress,

companion Olga Ivinskaya and her daughter into a labour camp, not a very severe one, but still a labour camp. The delegation also included a very, very distinguished chief editor of the literary magazine "The New World" ("Новый мир"), which was publishing a whole lot of real literature. And it was Tvardovsky, who took the very daring decision to publish "One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich," Solzhenitsyn's first and one of his best stories. And we were wondering what on earth was going to happen, because a large, but politely hostile audience had assembled. The rumour had got round that Surkov was going to be a member of that group, and people were all set to ask him very sharp, if not hostile, questions about Pasternak.

I was the interpreter, and perhaps more concerned for absolutely meticulous faithfulness than I've ever been, because I didn't want to give a more positive colouring to any single word, nor was it my right to slant it negatively.

And Surkov did an extraordinary clever thing. He began by saying, 'Yes, I know that you want to hear about Pasternak.' And he didn't let them say, 'Yes, and what have you done to Pasternak?', said, 'Yes, we all of us, you and we, all of us in the Union of Soviet Writers, we love dear Boris Leonidovich." (As you know, all Russians have a name and a patronymic, and there was this kind of false intimacy suggested by the use of the name and patronymic.) 'We love Boris Leonidovich. He is such a wonderful man, he is such a splendid man.'

And then he would introduce very, very subtly the odd subversive note: 'But dear Boris Leonidovich, like all great men, has his oddities, his eccentricities,

maybe even a lack of judgement.' And where he began by saying that Pasternak was such a wonderful and lovable man, by the end he had managed to suggest that he was also really rather dotty and, well, poor man, you know, one had to do these things for his own good. He spoke for probably about 40-45 minutes, and at the end the sophisticated English literary audience was saying, 'Well, yes, of course, yes! What a nice man! How very interesting what he has to say!' He had in fact bewitched them. But the bewitchment was thankfully broken by Tvardovsky who had been looking more and more gloomy, more and more sombre. He stood up and said, 'Well, Surkov has spoken for a long time, allow me just to read you a poem of mine.' It was a short poem, simply stating the fundamental fact that a poet has no right to trade his conscience, and he answers for every word that he says. And he sat down.

Cor. You mentioned Solzhenitsyn. When Solzhenitsyn was released from the USSR, you were one of the very first people to meet him. Why was that?

I.K. The BBC had engaged Solzhenitsyn to come and speak, and this was literally days after he had arrived in Zurich, the first place he was expelled to from the Soviet Union. But Solzhenitsyn had made it a condition that the broadcast was going to be anonymous. Nobody was going to know that he was coming over to do this. So, a fellow interpreter and I, we were driven deep into the country and we were told that this was a very distinguished Russian figure. And of course, it didn't take us all that long to work out that it must be Solzhenitsyn, after all

we knew he had just been expelled. Solzhenitsyn certainly made in those days, and I'm sure for many still perhaps continues to do so, he made an enormous physical impression. He walked into the room, ahead of the people with him, swung open the door. He was much shorter than we expected him to be, but what was remarkable about him was first of all the intense blueness of his eyes and the intensity with which he looked at everything before him. He looked at each person as they were introduced to him, he looked at the room and you could see that he was taking in everything in a very intensive way. And the other thing was the extraordinary, almost electric feeling of vitality that emanated from him. And, as we discovered afterwards both of us, both interpreters had the same thought, This must be how he had managed to go into remission from an inoperable cancer. It was this extraordinary strength of the force of life.

Cor. Solzhenitsyn was a great thorn in the side of the Soviet authorities, but also once he came out to the West, there were moments when his insistence on speaking the truth, as he saw it, was quite uncomfortable for some of his Western hosts as well.

I.K. I think, Western progressive, liberal intellectuals were a group of people who irritated him by the, as he saw it, naive and ignorant sympathy and blindness to what the Soviet Union really represented. But when he felt that people were ready to listen to what he had to say he could be a really inspired orator.

Cor. You interpreted not just for Solzhenitsyn, but for other writers and artists who were coming

over from the then Soviet Union. Were they all easy to interpret for; was Anna Akhmatova for instance? Was she easier than Solzhenitsyn to work with?

I.K. She was very different. I think it's not a question so much of saying who was easier or more difficult. Each one was a tremendous challenge. She was slow, she was very dignified, she was the poet... I'm almost tempted to say the poet-laureate¹, the poet who has reached a moment of apotheosis. A poet who has at last achieved the world-wide recognition that was always hers. And she was looking back, she was reliving certain experiences in the light of that universal recognition. It meant an enormous amount to her to be honoured as she was here in England, when the University of Oxford honoured her with a D.Lit (Doctor of Literature). She knew enough English to listen very, very carefully, which is always a little bit unsettling for the poor wretched interpreter. She wanted the quality of her speech as well as the sense of her words to be very exactly portrayed. And when someone asked her, 'Whom do you consider the greatest poets of the 20-th century in Russia' she answered immediately, 'But why? It is, of course, Mandelshtam, Pasternak and Akhmatova.' Cor. She was very conscious of her own worth, then.

IK. Yes, but one didn't feel that it was arrogance. She simply was too old and perhaps too sick to bother about social niceties. Cor. Did you find that having interpreted for all these very important and considerable artists and

¹ В Великобритании - придворный поэт.

writers that was a good preparation for when you met, say, Gorbachev for the first time when he came here?

I.K. Again it was a very different interpreting experience. Again an immensely memorable historical one. But with interpretation for politicians you have to be very certain of your technical language, whether it political or economic, of the correct diplomatic terms. So my first consideration was, if I have to interpret jet alone for Gorbachev or for other members of his delegation, that I was fully aware of the necessary vocabulary. And THE conditions in which you interpret are not always very easy. You have to change very rapidly from simultaneous interpretation in a booth, with earphones and microphone that is immovable in front of you, to consecutive interpretation, where any good interpreter will always have a little notebook and will make short notes, because again not a single part of what is said can either be paraphrased; it's got to be very exactly interpreted and all the terms have to be there... intact.

But on one occasion Lord Young, who was the British Minister that I was appointed to interpret for, escorted Gorbachev down the stairs at Lancaster House. And there was a conversation as we went down that splendid long staircase. At one point I saw a chance which I couldn't pass by, which was simply personally as a White Russian from the old White Russian emigration to say to Gorbachev how we appreciated the enormous historical significance of what he was doing and had done. And he didn't expect that, which was a curious reaction. He was almost startled by a purely personal uncalled for tribute.

Cor. When you spoke to Gorbachev in that way did you feel that you were rather exceeding the interpreter's duties?

I.K. Yes, I was. I couldn't resist taking advantage of that opportunity. But certainly, 1 was breaking the very strict conventions that govern the interpreter's place. The interpreter has absolutely no business talking to what is known as the Principal¹, but Lord Young was silent. I could sense that there was a short blank period and it was such a historic moment, such a memorable one that I took my courage in both hands and quickly said what I had to say to Gorbachev. And I don't regret it, though I certainly, wouldn't make a habit of that sort of thing. But on several further occasions I met them and had a fair amount to do on one occasion with his wife, Raisa Gorbacheva, who as we know had a stroke and a more serious one than I think we realized, when they were temporally under arrest at Foros in the Crimea, and she showed great courage and great inner discipline in disguising the physical aspects of her stroke. She tires easily if she walks, but she remains as conscious of her femininity, tries to be as elegant as she ever was. And 1 think of them both with great warmth.

Cor. When Gorbachev came here, it was I think in 1989, wasn't it, when you met him. That was at the point when people thought that he looked as if he was from abroad, that he was going to succeed in reforming the country. Did you get the impression that Gorbachev himself felt that he could succeed in reforming the whole system and survive himself politically? ¹ клиент, человек, которому переводишь.

I.К. I think he thought primarily in terms of his ability to change the system. What he really wanted to do and, I think, believed very deeply and very sincerely in this, that he could give the communist system, which he had after all been brought up in and had served m various capacities, that he could give it, as Dubcek did in Czechoslovakia, a human face. I certainly would not have said that he thought in terms of his personal survival or whether he would succeed or not, he believed that this was necessary, and he believed that it could be done. What I think he did not think of and which, as we now know, proved his undoing, he didn't realize that the system was unreformable. He thought it was. And everything was directed to this end.

Cor. After the coup (d'etat) that failed, but in fact destroyed his own power, and Boris Yeltsin took over, you interpreted for Yeltsin, too, on occasion. He was a very different leader and a very different kind of man, wasn't he?

I.K. He was a very different kind of man. I met him when one of our leading newspapers wanted to ^wr'^{te a} profile of him. He had just been elected president of the Russian Republic, this was 1990, so the Soviet Union still existed, so he was simply president of Russia but within the Soviet Union. And the only time when he could be interviewed was on a flight between Vienna and Amsterdam. The journalist who was going to interview him was an extremely sophisticated and experienced journalist but a real academic intellectual, whereas the moment we met Yeltsin, both of us in our different ways realized that this was not an intellectual, this was a man of very, very different

temper. He was willing to be interviewed but was rather nervous about it. He didn't know what form that interview would take. And when faced with sophisticated questions along the lines of ^uNow Mr. President, if you were to suppose that such and such a thing were to happen and such and such circumstances would perhaps affect it, what do you think ought to be done?" Yeltsin reacted in a very peasanty way — and I have no hesitation in saying that, because not only does he make no effort to disguise his peasant roots, he is in fact very proud of them, and speaks of himself as a man of peasant stock. And he reacted characteristically - he just fell silent. He retreated.

And at one point I had to say to him: "Boris Nikolaevich, if you do not give this interview, I'm afraid the profile may still be written but so to speak, without your participation." And again there was a characteristic reaction. He scratched his head, he brooded on that for a few minutes and said, "All right."

What I had to do on that occasion was not only to interpret the question but certain sections of each question, I had to gloss a little bit, to interpret them in terms that were more perhaps familiar to him. Yeltsin is an intelligent man, but it is an instinctive and intuitive intelligence.

Cor. If you glossed the questions did you find you then had to gloss the answers as well? I.K. No, because he responds very directly. He is articulate in his own way, it isn't a cultured Russian that you hear, it is a Russian very strongly marked by his own regional Ural accent, but he

answers directly. He doesn't play with concepts. He answers on points of fact, wether about himself or about the political situation.

Cor. Ever since the execution of the Tsar and his family the British Royal family had all refused to go to the Soviet Union and didn't in fact go until that regime had virtually disappeared. You accompanied them on that occasion. Did you feel this was a significant moment in history?

I.K. It was certainly perceived, I think by the Russian side and I think by many people on the British side as well, as a historic event. From the Russian side, and I heard President Yeltsin say this more than once, it meant an enormous amount. Not only historically, this was the first visit by a reigning British monarch. But what I heard said more than once by the Russian side was, if the British Queen — the Queen of Britain has agreed to come to Russia, it means that we have returned into the family of civilized nations. That was the historic significance of the Royal visit for Russia.

Cor. How important has it been to you to act as a bridge across the language divide?

I.K. I always considered it a very real privilege, because I was given both those great sources of riches, both British life and the culture growing up and living in this country, as well as the Russian culture, that was mine practically from the moment I could stand and speak. I have always been very conscious of the privilege of trying to make the one understandable, intelligible to the other side.

Cor. You mentioned the cultural side. But it isn't just in fact the language barrier, is it? It's a cultural divide as much as a language divide.

I.K. Yes, language of course is the bearer and the expression of a culture, and a culture means a certain cast of mind, certain attitudes, certain understandings of given values and all of that, I consider, has to be conveyed in interpretation. And in that sense I'm very glad that I had the opportunity of interpreting, not only in the political field with its very specific technical demands but also in the cultural field.

Cor. Are there some cultural and political concepts that are much more difficult to translate or to interpret literally from Russian into English?

I.K. There are a number of words which are easily translatable but which may have acquired or always have had rather different connotations. One example is when we talk of democracy we talk of democracy in terms of a long history of democratic institutions and a respect for the law that supports that democracy. This is a new experience for Russia. And therefore the word democracy has connotations associated with the historical development of the last 5 or 6 years. Another word that is always tricky is the word compromise. Now, when we talk of a compromise, we talk, actually, of a positive give-and-take, whereas compromise in Russian is an extraordinary difficult word to translate, because the concept tends to go more in the direction of compromise where this is the best that can be done, but is far from ideal, rather than a process of give-and-take.

Cor. The period which you've been working in this sphere, you've worked through the worst days of the Cold War and you've seen that the Cold War

come to an end. It doesn't seem to have ended the conflicts that happen particularly in that part of the world. Do we need interpreters as much as we always did?

I.K. I think interpreters will always be necessary. However much the knowledge of English improves among an ever greater number of people, there are still certainly going to be areas where interpretation is going to be necessary. I think perhaps some of the particular situations in which interpreting is essential, may grow, may change, may shift somewhat. But I think both in the political and in the commercial field and probably to a large extent for some time yet in the cultural field interpreters will continue to be essential. What I would like to see is interpreting that is not only simply an attempt to convey the literal meaning of the words, but interpreting which will always want to convey the values and the concepts that he behind what is being said by whichever side.

Cor. Irena Kirilova, thank you very much indeed.

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