Ukrainian interpreter!I advise you to visit Kharkov!

[SANDRO43]

But I studied a lot on my own and got a lot of practice and that is much better than a college in my view. So it depends. Practice makes perfect. Again, I dare point out that too many agency interpreters who do or did study to actually be ones can hardly put two English words together without a blunder.

I quite agree, a piece of paper is not necessarily a guarantee of efficient performance in ANY area - this depends largely on the quality of the specific teaching institution.

To cite a local example, teachers of French from our southern regions are quite ridiculous phonetically because they cannot pronounce nasal vowels, so for instance their une becomes yun . I immediately left a refresher course in Spanish when I heard the teacher pronounce rosa as in rose - Spanish Ss are always voiceless, as in russ.

IMO, Yulianna still has a LOT of ground to cover before she can seriously offer herself as a translator/interpreter.

Hi Yulianna! Nice to see you here Very unexpected, i may say I thought you were a singer? One of my clients mentioned to me before that you were singing and you told me once. Interesting.... Never thought that people who didn't even study to be a linguist/interpreter or translator can work in  this field Well, wish you luck!

Nice delivery, but why am I imagining a few sharp knives flying in the background ?

[Boethius]

why would you pay for not so high quality service, when you can get higher quality service from people who actually have an interpreting degree or just know english better, probably at the same price? At some point in that conversation she actually translated a sentence with a complete opposite meaning, i dont know if it was a typo, but still pretty careless. She said "she can judge me", instead of "she cant". If you translate something, you should bother to check you dont have typos that give a sentence an absolutely different meaning

Degrees mean nothing.  And no, I didn't see a completely opposite meaning.  In one of the criticisms of her translation that you made, she was correct, you were not.  Was her translation perfect?  No.  But someone doing person to person translation doesn't need to be perfect or check typos.   I think a lot of  "translation services" in Ukraine are more about hand holding, arranging accommodation, transport, etc.  That is where the real value will come in.  If we are to go by the posters here from Ukraine, Stirlitz has the best English speaking ability.  

Nice delivery, but why am I imagining a few sharp knives flying in the background ?

HAHA.  When I read that post, my mouth dropped.  Just a little passive-aggressive.

[possum]

Translators/interpreters that are truly fluent in English are few and far between in the FSU.. That's due in part to English being so different from Russian in so many ways.. Having an education system that's 70 years behind the times doesn't help either.. All that being said, I'm a firm believer in immersion as the only way to really learn a language.. It worked for me!.

[possum]

But I studied a lot on my own and got a lot of practice and that is much better than a college in my view. So it depends. Practice makes perfect. Again, I dare point out that too many agency interpreters who do or did study to actually be ones can hardly put two English words together without a blunder. So… it depends.

Where I live, a lot of graduates with translating degrees can't even translate their own diplomas.. They have no idea what English for переводоведение is, for example..

[Aloe]

In one of the criticisms of her translation that you made, she was correct, you were not.  

plz quote it, im always striving to improve

[Stirlitz]

Being a third pary, I have reviewed two web sites (Yulianna’s and Mila’s) and I understand now why Mila is shocked so there is a good reason for her to react like this. Basically, Yulianna is a copycat as I see it. You can draw your opinion on your own; but it seems funny to me that even the web site URL is nearly identical:

www.mila-interpreter.com for Mila;
www.yulianna-interpreter.com for Yulianna.

Why not choose a different name? For example, my web site is www.odessaguide.net. There are many other ways to title your web site. But if you look further you will see even more similarities like:

People say that I’m honest, reliable, smart and full of energy… in Mila’s site
My clients say I'm honest, kind and reliable. I am full of energy… in Yulianna’s.

The site’s contents are also nearly the same:

Home • About Me • My Services • Testimonials • Contact me • Useful links — Mila;
Home • About Me • My Services • Testimonials • Contacts — Yulianna.

Now have a look at the Services page:

Picking up from Kharkov airport, railway station, bus station and accompanying, included for free with carrying luggage — Mila,
Picking up at (Kharkiv) airport, railway station, bus station and accompanying to the place of staying, included for free with carrying luggage — Yulianna.

I fail to believe that the last line was not copied from the previous.

Not to mention the same rates. And, the real funny is that even e-mail addresses are at the same server meta.ua!! And, you got it: a Skype handle always looks like <name>-interpreter where <name> is either Mila or Yulianna. Real imaginative!

So I can understand if Mila is outraged. It is not exactly identity theft but something similar. I have nothing against Yulianna but I do not like her ways.

However, Mila should still be happy because there is something which was not stolen from her (perhaps it was overlooked or forgotten): her command of English So there is a difference though.

Where I live, a lot of graduates with translating degrees can't even translate their own diplomas.. They have no idea what English for переводоведение is, for example..

I have no idea either And it is not in any of my dictionaries which I have many.

[possum]

I have no idea either And it is not in any of my dictionaries which I have many.

That was sort of my point- why spend 5 years studying something that has no application in the real world?.

[Stirlitz]

You got it! That’s the main reason why I did not go to the university to study a language. It seemed to me that it was not worth the effort. I majored in physics and studied English on my own. I do not think I could have done well vice versa. And, when I looked at the curriculum of the linguistic department I realized that it was a waste of at least half of the time spent there. I do not think I would ever need to know Latin, the history of the English language, and many other courses taught there. While they did lack in interpreting training. At least when I was at the university about 15 years ago. You would be trained to be a teacher of English basically, not an interpreter.

(Having said that, I read a few books on the history of English and did try to study Latin on my own a little.)

[possum]

Someone explained to me a while ago what переводоведение (not to be confused with природоведение) meant.. It means you get to learn the basics of the actual process of translation, not how to translate this or that word or phrase.. 

[AnastassiaAsh]

переводоведение - Translation Theory or Translation Studies.

[possum]

переводоведение - Translation Theory or Translation Studies.

Sounds much nicer in English than in Russian..

[Aloe]

You got it! That’s the main reason why I did not go to the university to study a language. It seemed to me that it was not worth the effort. I majored in physics and studied English on my own. I do not think I could have done well vice versa. And, when I looked at the curriculum of the linguistic department I realized that it was a waste of at least half of the time spent there. I do not think I would ever need to know Latin, the history of the English language, and many other courses taught there. While they did lack in interpreting training. At least when I was at the university about 15 years ago. You would be trained to be a teacher of English basically, not an interpreter.

(Having said that, I read a few books on the history of English and did try to study Latin on my own a little.)

Where i went to uni, faculty of translation and translation theory had subjects like sociology, culturology, russian history, english reading, english phonetics, english grammar (they had those exact names - grammar and etc), 2nd language and latin, and other subjects that i cant remember and after 1st year you could pick up a 3rd language if you wanted. At english reading there were written translation assignments every time plus reading of some english classical books, at grammar also translation assignments all the time, at phonetics pronunciation assignments and memorizing like 3 pages of phonetical theory by heart (in russian)(by friday!! and if you miss out a single word, you fail!). At your 3rd year you get to choose if you wanna study for simultaneous interpreting, that is definitely not a teachers degree, i doubt you can learn that on your own, well you can, but it must be very difficult I quit during the first year though, cuz it wasnt what i wanted to study and i was gonna move abroad. It is known as the best linguistic uni in the whole FSU though, maybe thats why they had actual useful subjects The sucky part about that uni was that if you took the english (not german, spanish, chinese or etc) language exam upon entry, you did NOT get to choose the first 2 languages you study, you could specify your desired languages in your application form, and supposedly they take it into consideration, but then they would decide for you, i got english/french, i dont really like french, i wanted spanish, but you do get to pick your 3rd language. And you could switch groups during the very first week if you found someone from your target group who wanted to switch places with you. On the bright side, everyone who wanted to study chinese as their first language, got exactly that Also it sucked that up until 2006 they took 90 boys and only 30 girls every year, so the boys had to score like 150 points in 3 exams to get accepted to the uni, while the girls had to score like 280 in the same 3 exams, cuz there were few boys applying and many many MANY girls. Im talking about Moscow state linguistic university by the way.

[possum]

Where i went to uni, faculty of translation and translation theory had subjects like sociology, culturology, russian history, english reading, english phonetics, english grammar (they had those exact names - grammar and etc)

For be it from me to dismiss the usefulness of sociology and culture studies as I believe they can come in very handy to someone who wishes to communicate with a lot of people from different cultural backgrounds..  But as for the rest of the subjects you mention, those are things you pick up as you immerse yourself in the language, they don't need to be college courses..

at phonetics pronunciation assignments and memorizing like 3 pages of phonetical theory by heart (in russian)(by friday!! and if you miss out a single word, you fail!).

And what would be the point of that?. I fail to see the use of rote memorization of texts written in one's native language..

At your 3rd year you get to choose if you wanna study for simultaneous interpreting, that is definitely not a teachers degree, i doubt you can learn that on your own, well you can, but it must be very difficult

Agreed, that's a tough one to master, but it's no more difficult to do so on one's own than in a lecture hall setting..

As a side note, I don't quite get the desire of these universities to make multi-lingual people out of their students.. It's an unrealistic goal in the time frame that they have.. IMO, the students would benefit more if they just had to focus on one foreign language at a time.. As it is, they are spread too thin, and as a result we see the kind of things Stirlitz is talking about, i.e. interpreters not being able to put a sentence together, etc..

[Aloe]

And what would be the point of that?. I fail to see the use of rote memorization of texts written in one's native language..

im saying that it is not a degree an english teacher would get, like Stirlitz said

Agreed, that's a tough one to master, but it's no more difficult to do so on one's own than in a lecture hall setting..

It is not in a lecture hall, phonetics are done with recording equipment, and simultaneous interpreting is done in special booths that real interpreters of that kind work in on a conference for example.  I doubt you can teach simultaneous intepreting just by giving the theory The only time when you are in a lecture hall is when no special interaction is needed, for sociology, culturology and history, the rest of the subjects were first taught in groups of 12 people, then they split them and it became groups of 6 people.

[SANDRO43]

The sucky part about that uni was that if you took the english (not german, spanish, chinese or etc) language exam upon entry, you did NOT get to choose the first 2 languages you study, you could specify your desired languages in your application form, and supposedly they take it into consideration, but then they would decide for you, i got english/french, i dont really like french, i wanted spanish, but you do get to pick your 3rd language.

Curious rules, perhaps depending on the fact that English is in high demand and there are not enough teachers/courses to accommodate all applicants. Reminds me of our music conservatories, most who enter want to study the 'top' instruments, say the violin for instance, but many get diverted to the viola, cello or bass when no more places are available in violin classes. 

[Stirlitz]

I'm a firm believer in immersion as the only way to really learn a language.. It worked for me!.

How did I manage to learn it without ever being in England/America… perhaps I did not really learn it just faked it

[Jack]

Hello Yulianna, if you are still reading the discussion board I would like to give you some work in May.  Go to my profile, you'll see my e-mail.