The state will contribute to the development of translation

Participants of the roundtable held on the initiative of the Presidential Library and the Chief Research Computing Center of the Department of Affairs of the President of the Russian Federation, spoke about the need of the state contribution to the issues of translation.

The meeting brought together scholars and practitioners, representatives of public organizations and authorities. Experts from Russia and abroad exchanged views: representatives of dozens of institutions of culture, science and education in Russia and abroad joined the round table via videoconferencing.

According to the opening address of Alexander Vershinin, Director General of the Presidential Library, information technologies are indispensible for the translation of relevant texts, upgrade of the quality of translation of documents, improvement of methods of teaching translation, and others. "Therefore, we will be happy if another interesting scientific and practical project (in any form: as a round table, a conference, a seminar or a webinar) becomes permanent and regular within our walls. There are prerequisites for it, since the subject of language is one of the main areas of our activity," said Director General of the Presidential Library.

Alexander Maximov, Director General of the Chief Research Computing Center of the Department of Affairs of the President of the Russian Federation noted that the development of information society dictates the requirements for the accuracy of translation, which can cause serious economic and political events. Today there are systems enabling to translate large volumes of texts in an automated way, highlighting the most important issues of the materials, which is important for analytical work. The Chief Research Computing Center is ready to provide achievements and to develop cooperation in this field with stakeholders.

One of the major issues related to improving the quality of translation is the training of qualified personnel. Often, large public institutions rely on the professionals working from the 1960-s, since the mental outlook, diligence and literacy of current graduates often leave much to be desired. The measures to take to avoid such a situation were described by Irina Alekseeva, Director of the St. Petersburg Higher School of Translation, Herzen University, and Nicholas Garbovsky, Director of the Higher School of Translation.

It was noted that translators – native speakers, promoters and distributors of an exemplary Russian language, must polish up their skills every day, perfect themselves, have high self-organization. At the same time, according to the participants of the meeting, the machine translation provides an increase in production and quality with the help of professionals who know languages and are experienced editors. But in any case it is important to apply technologies in the industry.

They will help to avoid a lack of competition in the market, will improve economic efficiency, will expand the scope of offers from translating companies.

It was noted that the state must take strict control of the licensing of translation, of providing translation at the events associated with the image of Russia. The problem of approval of translation by lawyers when delivering judgments needs to be solved promptly.

"We need a single translation center established by the state," said Yuri Sayamov, UNESCO Chair at the Lomonosov Moscow State University. The center should systemize the translation industry, become a center, uniting scientists and experts.

The round table also considered the issues related to translation of Russian literature, legal, scientific texts, tourist guides.

The discussion was attended by representatives of the Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk), North-Caucasian Federal University (Stavropol), Reserve Center of Science and Culture in Yerevan (Armenia), Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan), Minsk (Belarus), Rome (Italy), Vientiane (Laos ).