Laura Esther Wolfson. Articles on Interpretation (1998 - 2004)

The ATA Chronicle, April 1999

No Beach Vacation, but Better than Two Weeks in the Gulag

Imagine the following scene: you are interpreting at a probation interview with a Russian-speaking defendant.

"Were you ever incarcerated in your home country before you came to the United States?" asks the probation officer.

"No," the defendant replies, looking boldly back at the officer. The former is seated with his hands folded on the table in front of him across from the probation officer. The officer's gaze drops to the interviewee's hands, where he sees a tattoo in the Cyrillic alphabet.

"Magadan," you read silently. Your heart gives a little jump.

"What does that say on your hand?" inquires the probation officer idly, squinting at the mysterious letters.

"Magadan," replies the defendant.

"What is Magadan?"

You are from the old Soviet Union, though you've been in the West so long that the world order has changed several times since you left. Magadan embodies some of the very reasons you changed hemispheres. Magadan, a region in the Far East of Russia, was home to one of the most feared penal institutions in the Soviet system known as the gulag, a system that housed millions of common criminals as well as political prisoners.

A shiver goes along your scalp as you look at the faded blackish-green inscription across the veins on the man's hairy hand. You imagine snowy, wind-scoured wastes, rations of dried bread and watery gruel in dented tin bowls. You see emaciated prisoners dragging heavy loads through ice and mud in a desolate corner of the Russian Far North, 11 time zones east of Moscow. The name "Magadan" is as familiar to you as Sing-Sing or Attica is to the Americans among whom you've lived for decades. The difference is that in Magadan, the prisoners were too cowed to riot.

You assume an expectant pose, pen suspended over your steno pad. What will the defendant say?

"Oh," he answers, "it’s a Russian resort on the Black Sea. I had this tattoo done when I was there on vacation one summer, back when I was young." A con man in every sense of the word, he smiles dreamily as he says this, as if basking in pleasant recollections of golden sands and gentle sea breezes.

Suddenly you remember a conversation from your teenage years. You were loitering in your favorite spot, a dark entry in a dilapidated, cement, Kruschev-era apartment block redolent of leaky plumbing. You were sneaking cigarettes, choking, and trying hard to act as if you weren't dying of smoke inhalation. One of your tough older buddies, a gravity-defying cigarette dangling off his lip, was telling stories he'd heard from an uncle about life outside the law. In the course of the narrative, he mentioned that the Russian word "resort" had a secret underworld meaning: "resort" was a code word for "prison."

All these years later, what do you do? Are you duty-bound to share your cultural knowledge with a U.S. probation officer? Or do you sit biting your lip to keep your jaw from dropping, your eyes downcast to hide your incredulous expression?

Unlike, for example, our Spanish-speaking colleagues, who do the lion's share of judicial interpreting in this country and are consequently blessed with a cornucopia of continuing education opportunities, we Russian interpreters rarely have the opportunity to gather together in language-specific groups to debate issues and perfect our craft. One does not have to look far for the reason: Russian is not even a distant second on the list of languages used in judicial proceedings. Until recently, hardly anyone would spend 10 cents to make us better at what we do.

And yet, the Russian language is becoming ever more important in the world of interpreted judicial proceedings, as indicated by an unprecedented event in the interpreting community: this past January, the federal court in the Southern District of New York sponsored a two-week training course for Russian court interpreters, at which conundra like the one set forth above were discussed at length and with feeling. (Two instructors initially disagreed on how an interpreter should handle this situation, but following consultation with a judge, concluded that the interpreter should remain silent.)

The course was organized and funds to cover all associated costs secured by the indomitable Nancy Festinger, chief interpreter for the Southern District of New York. How she convinced the black-robed colossi who bestride the court system that raising the quality of Russian interpretation and increasing the pool of qualified, available Russian court interpreters was something justifying an outlay of ten thousand dollars is a mystery, like many others in the courts, whose answer will never be known.

But we do know this: Russian judicial interpreting is a growth industry. The recent trial of a Russian-speaking woman who, with the help of an obliging cousin, sliced her husband of several decades' standing into dozens of pieces and disposed of him in numerous garbage bags in a river in New Jersey (described by some observers as the 0.J. Simpson case of the Russian émigré community) has convinced many of this. Ditto the case of a well-known Russian crime figure known as Yaponchik, (”Little Japanese Guy”) who stated with a straight face after his arrest last year for extortion that his primary activity in New York was penning children's books.

According to one of the course instructors, Russian "guest artists," i.e., criminals who come here on a temporary basis (as opposed to the more settled émigré variety) now consider a U.S. prison term—preferably a brief one, to be sure—as well-aimed a bullet on their resumes as an MBA from the Wharton School is for up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Crime among Russian-speakers in America has come a long way since the old days when émigré pickpockets opened freshly-filched wallets only to find them empty of cash and full of credit cards, whose use the new arrivals could not fathom, leading them to toss their haul into the nearest trash bin with a snort of disgust.

The seventeen Slavists selected to start off the New Year by attending this course were chosen competitively from a pool of 50 applicants mainly from the New York area, with a few participants from further down the East Coast. The geographic factor was a crucial one, as graduates of the course will be—in fact already have been—called upon to interpret in the courts in Manhattan, often on extremely short notice. Applicants learned of the course by direct mail and word of mouth. The first stage involved submission of résumés and other documentation of qualifications. Those who made the first cut were called in to take a tape-recorded test covering consecutive and simultaneous interpretation. The resultant roster of Russophones was diverse in age and experience, from interpreters with decades of high-level and conference experience to talented neophytes. The group included 13 native Russian-speakers, three native English-speakers, and a solitary, fearless Pole. Participants included one staff interpreter from family court (all the others were freelancers), one interpreter who also numbers Hebrew among his working languages (and doubles as a certified massage therapist), a graduate of the Monterey Institute's Russian interpreting program, one sign language interpreter, a poet, a Ukrainian translator who is also conducting a one-man crusade to standardize the English translations and transcriptions of Russian and Ukrainian geographic designations and place names, an erstwhile professional pianist, and a sprinkling of present and former college English instructors.

The lucky laureates learned about legal lingo, benefiting from the wisdom of two seasoned Russian interpreters who served as their primary instructors, the Oxbridge-accented Valerii Schukin, formerly on the faculty of the Minsk Institute of Foreign Languages (Belarus, former USSR), and the dryly humorous Andrew Tarutz, who interprets in diplomatic as well as judicial settings. These two were spelled by an astonishingly varied lineup of guest speakers. Among the latter were: two federal judges; a linguist/former dissident who is now an editor and crime reporter at Novoye Russkoye Slovo (a Russian-language daily published in New York City); the author of a four-volume dictionary of Russian criminal slang (asked how he gathered slang words for his dictionary, he replied, "My sources generally call me collect from prison."); the top-ranking FBI Russian linguist in New York; a deputy chief assistant district attorney; a lawyer from the office of the federal defenders; and two members of the FBI Russian organized crime squad. The latter provided hard-to-find historical and cultural background about Russian organized crime going back to the nineteenth century, and described how organized crime traditions have changed with the collapse of the Soviet monolith. Specifically, they gave details about the traditional Russian crime bosses, known by an enigmatic term that translates literally as thieves-in-law (which has absolutely nothing to do with your spouse’s relatives). Thieves-in-law would attain this title, the ultimate sign of respect, by a vote of their peers at meetings convoked in prison cells. They were expected to live simply and adhere to a rigid code of ethics, which included never marrying and never holding a job or official identification papers, since all of these practices acknowledge the ultimate authority of the state. According to the lecturers, thieves-in-law are now being superseded by a different class of criminal, more ruthless, more violent, and less willing to follow any code of conduct whatsoever. Newer criminals can now purchase the title of thief-in-law, which, like many commodities in the former U.S.S.R., was once upon a time not for sale at any price.

The atmosphere in the class was one of rambunctious collegiality. In terminology sessions led by Andrew Tarutz, the participants animatedly discussed such issues as the correct Russian renderings of terms of art: verdict, lawyer, grand larceny, beyond a reasonable doubt, evidence, arguments, whore, Mirandize, deceived husband, and money-laundering (memorably misrendered by one participant as "money bleaching"), letters rogatory, speedy trial exclusion, subpoena, background check, deposition, affidavit, stipulation, probation officer, and numerous other scraps of essential courtroom verbiage.

A highlight of these sessions was Andrew's virtuosic rendering of the English word "abuse" into Russian more than half a dozen different ways depending on context, and encompassing the following meanings: to insult, to molest, to attack verbally, to misuse, to beat, to exploit, to harass.

The seminar was held in a courtroom, which lent an air of verisimilitude to the proceedings. During frequent sessions of simultaneous interpretation practice, the decibel level gave a deceptive impression of chaos. While one person (usually one of the three native English-speakers) read out various samples of judicial boilerplate, such as an advisement of rights or the judge's instructions to the jury, the remaining 16 participants scattered to the room’s far corners and whispered into tiny tape recorders all at the same time, giving a whole new meaning to the term "simultaneous interpretation."

During consecutive practice, the witness stand came in handy. One person played the witness, another played the role of the counsel examining the witness, a third interpreted, and the rest took notes assiduously and afterward provided copious commentary on the strong and weak points of the interpreter’s performance. In one case, the weak points included a mistranslation of "prickling sensation" as "acupuncture" and a reference to a woman who underwent surgery in order to have her uterus "cut off."

One session, taught by Valerii Schukin, was devoted to the subject of tape transcription in all its complexity: what equipment is most appropriate for this task; conventions for indicating inaudibility; whether to attempt to identify speakers (don't); how to transcribe various sounds, such as knocking, clicking, and slamming; what to do when several languages are spoken on the tape and you know only one or two of them, and so on. All this was punctuated with humorous true-life tales, for example, this comment made by a suspect and recorded on a wiretap: "Isn't it great that we're not in Russia any more and don't have to worry about the police listening in!" Or this: an excited flurry of telephone calls picked up by the bug as a group of suspects went down their informal phone tree to leave the message: "Come over to Sasha's at eight tonight, we're watching The Godfather!"

The final session was devoted to marketing. While not directly related to court interpreting, this is a subject of perennial interest to all self-employed people. Valerii shared pointers gleaned from decades in the business and a Dale Carnegie course in salesmanship. Subjects covered included cold calling, résumé, business card and brochure design, and not despairing when work diminishes to a trickle.

The course graduates (all of whom took an exit exam and received a certificate upon completion of the course) went away freighted with numerous glossaries and other reference materials that were distributed throughout the two weeks. Among the loot toted home were the Russian tape set for the ACEBO court interpreting course (a truly lavish gift from the courts to each participant) and an annotated bibliography listing attendees' favorite dictionaries and legal reference works.

The crucial question on everyone's lips was: would we receive more work as a result of clearing our calendars for two weeks in order to take the course? The answer became abundantly clear during the lunch break on the very first day, as the instructors began approaching attendees with offers of assignments, both in translation and interpretation. We had been sternly advised at the outset that anyone absent for more than five hours during the two weeks would not receive a certificate of completion; however, several participants were pulled from the class and assigned to interpret at court proceedings, and they were of course not penalized for the time missed. Which simply goes to show those who poo-poo continuing education as hopelessly irrelevant and out of touch with marketplace concerns that the people who put this course together, not least among them the aforementioned Nancy Festinger, herself a former freelancer, were not only serving the needs of the court by providing a larger pool of qualified Russian interpreters; they were also serving the needs of those same interpreters in the most immediate and tangible way, by helping us pack our calendars with interpreting dates and increasing our accounts receivables.

The course ended with a swanky champagne reception attended not only by course participants and instructors, but by a delegation of European interpreters from l'Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence (AIIC), who were visiting the U.S. to deepen their knowledge of court interpretation. Apparently the members of this august body felt that they, too, had something to learn about interpreting from the federal court of the Southern District of New York.