Linguistic Notes

Often the word "fluency" is used as a benchmark of one’s knowledge in a foreign language. For some, "fluent" is synonymous to "native"; indeed, how man...

When thinking about translation, our mind instinctually takes on a route that fixes our attention to the meaning standing behind the words; to what is said rather than to how it is said. Which...

These past few weeks I have been studying works of other translators in my language pair and though I always talk about how important the decisions translators make in their translations are, ...

Some people have no idea what it’s like to have two active languages in your head all the time while trying to fit a few others in too. I mean, it can be pretty much crazy. A spinner of ...

Editing in translation plays a critical role. It is the 'finishing touch' that defines the quality of the final translation and so, chiseling the editing skills in translation as impor...

Slang is a set of words and phrases used to express thoughts and feelings in a specific, unconventional way. Quite often it is a combination of uncombined, the meaning of which can be specifie...

I would be a terrible liar if I told you that anyone can be a freelancer. Even though I do believe that everyone has the potential to become one. Confusing? That is right because opinions abou...

From very early age, we have been taught to be nice to people, to be agreeable, and not cause discomfort to those around us. Be a nice girl, be a nice boy, and behave properly. And undoubtedly...

When one of my clients asked me this question, I had a mini stupor: on one hand, there were all sorts of answers to this question swirling in my head but on the other, I could not fit those an...

Have you been thinking of getting your book translated? If so, then you must be familiar with an inner dilemma occurring over how to do this and whether it is something your book truly needs r...

I was baffled to know that Russian book market has the same reputation as the Russian mafia. This reputation is based on two widely spread myths: rampant piracy and low prices. This is one of ...

For a long time, only a selected amount of books had the privilege to get translated ever year. I must also add here that only traditionally published books could have a chance to get translat...

I have read dozens of articles about proofreading and editing in translation but the deeper understanding of what is proofreading of translation came to me only after a year of actively w...

When it comes to learning languages, motivation is not just a fancy word but a riverbed in which your language learning progress flows.

It is one of the most important inner resource...

Singular ‘they,’ yes or no? It has been one of the main dilemmas in my translation work this year. Especially considering the difference between how gender is used in Russian and E...

For me, machine translation and human translation are things of two different worlds. It does not mean that something is generally better than the other. Both have its pros and cons but p...

As a literary translator, I have a quite interesting hobby, which is to read the same book first in the source language (for me it is English) and then in the target language (for me it is Rus...

I have already mentioned these two books on my Instagram, but I thought it would be great to dedicate my attention to them one more time here.

Why?

Because these two books ...

This brilliant, with its simplicity, question stands at the base of the professional journey called freelance. But how many freelancers can actually answer this question?

For a long ...

It’s been almost five years since I first discovered freelance as a way of living for myself.

For a long time, I kept definition of freelance and business separate in my mind. ...

How do you learn the mastery of literary translation? By translating.

The more you translate, the better you get. But there is a side effect, and I'm just going to call it what i...

For years, I was holding any thoughts of becoming a Literary Translator at bay, mainly, because as a writer, I did not want to do anything else but write. But life has its own ways with us and...

To make a written text shine you need to trust it to the hands of a knowing polisher

—Editor.

Exquisitely written bo...

As I stepped in this multifaceted world of translation, the only question that kept me awake at night was ‘If my translation is CORRECT?’ Fidgeting over every word, s...

We are living in times, when everything has a price, but this price is not always reasonable.

Who would not want to save some money if there is a chance to? Especially, when we talk ...

Good translator is not a unicorn. Surely if you know where to look, you will find plenty.

The most common way – Translation Agencies. But even though it is one of the easiest w...

There is only one way to turn one book into many, and it is to translate.

Yet, the amount of books that never get a chance to be translated is enormous. It is even more so in th...

I was born in Russia. How did it happen that almost half of my life I’ve consciously dedicated to learning English, I find rather hard to narrate in few words… But today’s r...