In honor of the "invisible front" heroes and the contemporary successors of this military profession, in memory of military translators, the special event "Day of the Immortal Regiment" was arranged at SPC RAS.
"We all perfectly know that the simultaneous translation is a multifactorial process, actually consisting of three parallel mental activities: receiving information, processing information and issuing information. In the light of computer science, I only can imagine how difficult to put all this in practice. How a person copes this task lies beyond my understanding. Watching the translator’s work in real time, each time I am deeply surprised and filled with sincere respect – this is aerobatics. At the same time, military translators must perform the same functions, and provide for the stable high quality, at that, taking into account and subtly correcting the exerted on them physical and psychological pressure, because millions of lives depend on their work. I want to express my gratitude to the military translators, as well as to the organizer of the Immortal Regiment for their activities. I hope our joint work will continue!", - Ronzhin Andrey Leonidovich, Director of SPC RAS, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of RAS, opened the meeting with a welcoming speech.
Activities of the Immortal Regiment are widely supported and broadcasted in many languages. All participants of the event contributed to making a collective Greeting to veterans and active military translators.
The meeting was attended by:
"Thank you for having paid attention to translators, and firstly to the military ones. This profession is not conspicuous. For me, it is truly connected with one of the brightest events in my life. I mean the translation of the final statement of the UN Observers on February 15, 1989, and I want to talk more and more about this profession. Every translator should give himself answers as early as possible to questions how to plan his future life or how to extend the translation sphere to country studies or to history. After all, no translator can know the language, so to speak, "matching the upper bar", and if so, then it is at best one, the main and most familiar. The question may arise: what helps to master the language seriously? I will say for myself — books helped me the most, and I think this is not accidental! It is also very important to behave correctly. A real translator should be completely unobserved; I don't understand those who climb under the soffits. If the negotiators didn't remember the translator's name, then that's good. The main wish is to make the conversation useful for oneself," commented military translator in Chinese and English, novelist, screenwriter, publicist, poet, participant in events in 7 hot spots, officer of interaction with UN Observers in Afghanistan, head of the information front in the Second Chechen campaign, colonel of the reserve – Podoprigora Boris Alexandrovich.
"Military translation is a special translation, wartime is the hardest time! Such responsibility for the fate of people, every word is important: both work with the text, and the interrogation of a prisoner of the war! Try not to understand at least some little thing, it can later turn into terrible consequences," Surgaev Andrei Sergeyevich shared and cited as an example the emblem of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, depicting two crossed feathers symbolizing the main object of the translator's work - the word.
Head of the International Cooperation Department of SPC RAS Irina Petrovna Podnozova shared her memories about the lives of familiar military translators who were in the Great Patriotic War.
The meeting featured a poem "Going over our Dates" by the front-line soldier David Samoilov performed by Mikhail Dragunov, an actor of the Russian Enteprise Theater named after A. Mironov, as well as a song by members of the creative public council of the Immortal Victory Regiment by Donetsk composer Mikhail Khokhlov and poet Vladimir Skobtsov.
We heartily congratulate the military translators. Thank you for your hard and invaluable work!