• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Distorting Mirror or Dim Reflection of a Distorted World?

23 November, 1999 - 00:00

One of Ukraine’s laws translated into English suggested “the Autonomous Republic of Crime” to be one of the country’s regions, in place of the Crimea. No other mistake ever was so correct. One thing is disturbing: it looks like a portent.

Once, trying to verify the spelling of some geographical names, I referred to an electronic atlas of the world issued by an American company. It appeared of little assistance, however, as many towns and cities outside the Anglo-Saxon universe were cited in a somewhat strange manner, neither English nor native language. For instance, it suggested neither Cologne nor KЪln, but Koln, and one of the countries bordering on Ukraine was designated as Belorus. Ukrainian toponyms were also hardly recognizable. Kyiv alone had as many as three different names: Kyyiv, Kiev and Kyiev, while the Black Sea port was named Iiichevsk.

Frankly, such a discovery was not unexpected: the chart mentioned here suggested Los Angeles (the manufacturer’s seat) to be the hub of the universe.

The Ukrainian perception of native place names does not differ much from the Californian. Our everyday experience of dealing with calling cards, advertising, letterheads, and suchlike, issued by Ukrainian companies and official institutions, gives “Kiev” as the most commonly used version of the name of our capital. This is so even for the Kyiv city state administration, and Kyiv specialized customs. But why are Ukrainians so used to the obsolete version of the Moscow News, stubbornly disregarding the correct spelling, Kyiv, used in The New York Times and The Economist?

On April 19, 1996 the Ukrainian commission on legal terminology announced, “Ukrainian proper names are reproduced by means of the English language, proceeding from their original form, written in accordance with applicable spelling norms, without mediation of any other language.”

One need not think at all: elaborating the rule, you just write a Ukrainian word, putting Latin letters instead of Cyrillic. One thing is required, however: knowledge of Ukrainian spelling norms.

The basis for disregard of the spelling rules and for common breach of copyrights is the same: general legal nihilism, from the man in the street to top officials, further aggravated by the lack of self-respect or by ill-perceived self-respect.

We cited an example of translation of a most common Ukrainian word. No translation is possible without more or less professional knowledge of the languages you use. In this respect, the problem of translation hat zwei Ende, as the Germans put it: two ends, mastering a foreign language and Ukrainian.

There are some purely technical obstacles impeding the progress of translation in Ukraine. Each of them is very serious and requires a separate discussion:

1. Lack of specialized foreign dictionaries (technical, judicial, engineering, etc.);

2. Lack of dictionaries of rarer languages, or, sometimes, of languages which are in high demand, on account of Ukraine’s geography, like Polish, let alone oriental languages or those of the former USSR, although Ukrainian dictionaries have been published in China, Poland, and Uzbekistan.

Those two factors make Ukrainian translators use either Russian or, more rarely, English dictionaries, thus sometimes producing a garbled mess. Considering the difference between synonyms and secondary meanings, translation sometimes looks very vulgar. At the same time, Ukraine possesses vast possibilities for compilation of comprehensive dictionaries in nearly all major European languages, as Ukrainian linguists chair departments in European and North American universities (few nations may be proud of Slavicists comparable to George Shevelov), while Ukrainians have for decades integrated into the American, Canadian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, German, French, Romanian, Lithuanian, Georgian societies, and the vocabulary need not be artificially invented, just processed.

3. Ukrainian special terminology in some branches is still underdeveloped and unsettled. Such is an objective situation caused by the past Russification of science, technology, education and administration in Ukraine. This can be cured. In Israel modern terminology was created within a very short period of time in a blank space, given the isolation of Hebrew from other languages and its limited sphere of application for centuries. A bit older example is presented by the Czechs, the “dying Czech nationality”, as Friedrich Engels saw them: “Moravians and Slovaks have long lost all traces of national identity and national viability... Professor Palack л y , the main advocate of the Czech nationality, is but a learned German gone mad; he still can’t speak Czech correctly and without a foreign accent... Bohemia can further exist only as a part of Germany” (Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany, an example of Communist internationalism in action). Despite this, it took only a few years for the Czech language to adapt to the challenges of statehood and industrial revolution. Thus, to reiterate, this disease is curable.

4. Here we pass to the central point: public demand for our work. Quality translations have to be consumed. Only a decade ago the system of teaching of foreign languages was intended to bring about an aversion for an English newspaper or the BBC, and one should admit that it worked. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, reading English, German, French, or Italian on the subway became familiar. A few years brought an entirely different situation, and for the young generation it is normal now to speak a foreign language, most often English, on the level of a street vendor somewhere in the Balkans. I am not facetious: they can fluently speak on a wide range of subjects with correct pronunciation. If only they stopped there.

But this new generation often tends to earn something from their knowledge. Too often is such an intent accompanied by a very superficial attitude toward their job, laziness, and complete disregard for customers. Otherwise it becomes hard to explain the errors in translation impossible even with a very mediocre translator who gets an idea of professional dignity and cares to open a dictionary, reference book, or encyclopedia just not to be ashamed afterwards.

At present our society tolerates any experiments, indifferently consuming the illiterate advertising that we all hear and see. Public advertising presents however the tip of the iceberg: business correspondence, commercials, technical documentation, and legislative acts make a dozen times vaster stratum of translation, abounding in mistakes seriously affecting the content. It may seem strange for a normal European, but the grossest errors are caused by poor knowledge of Ukrainian. For instance, a Ukrainian legislative act regulating agricultural imports. The translator, having seen (liquid oil) in the text, interpreted that like Russian homophone (rare oil). Another translator, producing medical instructions, directed rubbing ointment with a thin ball, confusing Ukrainian layer with Russian ball.

Maybe he knew no better. However, government officials, industrials, politicians, all this, I dare say, national О lite, elected or appointed to high positions, look no better.

When one listens to top politicians, it becomes clear that they hardly ever read Ukrainian newspapers, watch television, or read books. Ministers, ambassadors, heads of regional state administrations, that is, officials immediately pursuing national policy, often have only a very faint idea of the Ukrainian language, not to mention European ones. This is why they transform Kyiv into Kiev, even in English: they subconsciously translate from Russian, not Ukrainian.

In this case, speaking Russian means Russian thinking. Western-oriented reform on Ukrainian soil, engineered and implemented by Russian-minded people, will always fail. The issue is one of perception of the world. Russians hailed numerous resolute and reckless steps by their president. It was so when he failed to get out of a plane when on a visit to Ireland, when he ordered the bombardment of Parliament, when he tried to sink Chechnya in blood — in short, when he demonstrated his force and complete defiance of partners and opponents. Ukrainians are reluctant to see similar developments in Ukraine. Yet, the Russian model is repeatedly imposed on the Ukrainian society. And the English language interpretation of Ukrainian realities from the Russian word-for-word serves only as a demonstration of inability to think in Ukrainian terms.

One large state-owned enterprise of Ukraine’s military- industrial complex has foreign correspondence translated both into Ukrainian, as provided by the law, and into Russian, as directed by the General Manager; he cannot understand a business letter in Ukrainian. Double translation is not a cheap service, but he pays. Why does he hold this position? Because he has a pull in Moscow, his employees say. Symptomatic.

“Language is the home of existence. This home gives shelter to a man” (Martin Heidegger). Thousands of bureaucrats hang around Ukraine, stray and homeless, without the first idea why there should be any Ukrainian language, Ukrainian Church, Ukrainian industry, Ukrainian borders, while there are a canonical church, canonical language, and canonical economy. That is why word-formation, as a continuation of state-formation, most often takes shape of awkward claques from Russian. Even names of ministries, agencies, and governmental officials are translated from Russian in a form absolutely alien to Ukrainian. In such circumstances one could wait for quality dictionaries for good: we shall never have money enough for that purpose.

And now let us take a look at the subject from another direction. How many people in the Cabinet of Ministers speak foreign languages? Apart from Borys Tarasiuk, with his professional knowledge, and Serhiy Tyhypko, it would be hard to mention anyone else. Are the leaders of the Verkhovna Rada more enlightened? Oh, my God...

Not so long ago the Prime Minister of Latvia delivered a speech for Ukrainian officials, The Latvian Road to Europe. He did it in English; and his poor listeners failed to understand even the gist. Perhaps if presidential advisers could read Polish or Hungarian newspapers, we would not repeat the Russian socioeconomic and political experiments with such masochistic zeal.

Let’s go back to where we started, KIEV or KYIV. On May 10, 1996, Euronews showed the parade in Kyiv on Victory Day. Elderly people were walking along Khreshchatyk, bearing banners of the USSR, Soviet Ukraine, and portraits of Stalin. The President of Ukraine greeted them from a stand bearing the caption: Kiev, Russia. Nothing was strange about it. At least the scenery must be changed for someone to bother writing, Kyiv, Ukraine.

The situation worsens. Illiteracy becomes a standard. Dictionaries sometimes present commercial terms adopted from English in a form distorted by Russian morphological norms. For instance, quotation, which should have been translated as is presented as purely Russian by its form, with suffix, borrowed by Russians from German (ier), but absolutely alien to Ukrainian. Translation reflects this. We note that few people care about the correctness of translation of geographic, historic, or economic terms; but can the situation be different, when the very starting point is wrong?

Rubric: