SCIENTIFIC EDUCATIONAL CENTER science idea

On June 6, the UN celebrates the Day of the Russian Language. The tradition of honoring the six official languages of the United Nations was born in 2010, and a year later this holiday, celebrated on the birthday of the poet Alexander Pushkin, was added to the official calendar in Russia by presidential decree. At the UN, Russian is spoken at meetings of the General Assembly and the Security Council, at conferences and negotiations, in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions around the world.

Russian Russian translation of all official events at the United Nations is carried out by simultaneous interpreters, and the Russian text of resolutions and other documents is the responsibility of the translation service. And in the service of verbatim reports, they keep a "chronicle" of what happened at the meetings. And all this information in Russian can be found on the UN website.

It is no secret that the diplomatic," UN", language is specific: there are terms, abbreviations, and complex grammatical constructions necessary to accurately reflect the positions of delegations on a particular issue.

But how can this language and information about the UN be made available to a wide audience? That's what we, the UN News Service, are for. Every day we tell you about what is happening in the UN and the world. And we try to make it as clear as possible.

Russian Russian is the UN language, what are its features, and how to "translate" it into a public language, Anton Uspensky asked Elena Vapnichnaya, the editor-in-chief of the UN News Service in Russian.

AU: Elena, you have been working at the UN for more than 20 years. How has the news format at the UN changed during this time, and has the Russian language that you and your colleagues use to tell us about what is happening at the UN changed? Are there any recipes for how to talk about the complex problems that the UN is dealing with in a way that is understandable to a wide audience?

EV: If someone could give me a recipe, I would be very happy! Yes, twenty years is a long time, but they were very diverse precisely because during this time there were rapid changes. Both from a technical point of view, and from the content, and from the point of view of the format. When I started, it was UN Radio. Let me remind you that we worked with reels, with magnetic tape. Our sound engineers absolutely masterfully cut out all our mistakes. Then there were cassettes, mini-discs, etc. Now we are working in a digital format. We have almost come to "non-stop production", and all this is now available on our website, and not on reels or cassettes. Moreover, we are now called "multimedia", because we do not only audio-although we still take interviews, and very interesting, and audio digests – daily and weekly, and so on – but also photos, and text news, and videos. That is, we try to really work in a multimedia format.

The UN language probably hasn't changed, at least not for the better. This is a bureaucratic language, a very special genre. I would say it is full of such "multi-storey" structures, for example, something like " make efforts to implement a project aimed at improving efficiency...." - I exaggerate, of course, but this is close to reality. And since we work mainly with UN materials, we all suffer all the time, how can we "translate" some complex problems set out in such an indigestible language into human? I think we are succeeding. Because at the beginning of my work on the radio, our listeners reproached us just for such a very dry, official language. I don't hear such complaints now.

It is also important to stand on the side of the reader, the viewer, the listener

But we still have a second difficulty. We work mainly with the source material in English: reports,press releases, with rare exceptions, and press conferences, and speeches-all this is in English. That is, we need to make a news item in good Russian from English, maybe not very well written press release or press conference. And not only that, we are dominated by this UN language, to which, by the way, we are also getting used – we have to slow ourselves down a little and break away from this very specific language. But in addition, we are affected, as my friend the translator says, "the magic of the original language". You need to look at your material and try to understand whether the reader will even suspect that this was originally not said in Russian? That is, we must write in such a way that no one even thinks that there is a foreign language somewhere, so that it sounds like a person would say it in Russian from the very beginning. I think this is very important.

It is also important to stand on the side of the reader, the viewer, the listener. To go beyond this specific UN world into the real world and think: "But a person who lives a life with a huge number of his own problems, it will be interesting, will he understand it at all?". I, in particular, focus on my very good friend. She is a philologist, a candidate of sciences, a very educated person, but very far from the UN. And when I tell her about my work, about some events in international life, about climate change, for example, I think I do it in a human way-but not simplifying it. Therefore, I sometimes imagine how I would explain this complex task, this complex thing, a complex concept to this friend of mine-in terms of choosing a clear, accessible, capacious language.

AW: So you" recipe "and revealed: namely," cook as for yourself or as for your loved ones", and you will get what you need. As you said, you just have to talk about very complex topics. And the most important topic of recent times that we have to work with is, of course, the topic of the pandemic and coronavirus. A year ago, on the occasion of the Russian Language Day, you interviewed philologist Maxim Krongauz, and it was just about the new words that appeared in the language precisely because of the pandemic, and about the new meanings of words that appeared. This is all related to the words "coronavirus", "pandemic", derived from the abbreviation COVID, and many, many others. Which of these words have taken root in the language? Which of them are used, in your opinion, in the UN context, and which people working in the UN and diplomats try to avoid?

EV: Let's start with the fact that when the term COVID-19 appeared, it was not very clear where to put the emphasis. For example, in Russia, in Russian-speaking countries, journalists and specialists pronounced this word very differently. Then, somehow, I think everyone-I mean, outside the UN – got tired of writing these Latin letters, and they began to write "covid"in Russian letters. But we kept the original name, COVID-19. In general, we have greatly expanded our knowledge in the medical field, I must say. Of course, we don't use words like "quarantine" or "zoom in" in our work.»... Although I am delighted with the ability of our language to master, assimilate and appropriate foreign words and rework them in their own way, to make them convenient. But, in general, this part of the dictionary still remains outside the UN after all. But just the other day, our colleague said that she" trembled", wrote the word "dopandemic", not being sure whether it is correct or not, you can already use it or not.

In general, we have greatly expanded our knowledge in the medical field

COVID-19, of course, is an unprecedented phenomenon that has affected absolutely all areas of our lives, including language. But the language is changing rapidly – it's just hard to keep up with it! So many transformations are happening in it! We all read journalism in Russian, news materials, listen to podcasts: both for pleasure, and in order to understand what is happening in the language at all now, to understand whether we can already use this word or not, it has already entered into everyday use, in the "mainstream", in the layer of neutral literary vocabulary or not?

Today, there are no criteria. It is absolutely impossible to wait for it to enter the dictionary that will be printed. This is completely absurd. And Maxim Krongauz and I were just talking about this topic. The same "bullying". We have a lot of materials about bullying – about bullying and bullying at school. Yes, there are Russian equivalents, but we can't write "bullying"in every sentence. It is necessary to develop a synonym series. So again, the question is: has "bullying" already entered the language or has it not? The same "harassment" ... and here, I think, you need some flair.

We have another difficulty – it is the dominance of abbreviations. UNHCR, for example. Such a discordant combination – and a good thing: the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. The "High Commissioner" itself also raises the question, what is it? But the UN was created, after all, 75 years ago. And then, maybe, it was some kind of if not everyday, then at least a familiar phrase. You have to be creative and somehow avoid abbreviations.

The other extreme is the completely unthinkable long names. For example, there is the Convention on the Prohibition of Torture. In fact, it is called the Convention on the Prohibition of Torture and Other Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Well, if we start the sentence with this, it is clear that no one will read any further. Therefore, we are faced with two tasks: on the one hand – to move away from this bureaucratic language, but on the other – not to slide into the spoken language, but to find a middle ground and write and speak in a neutral, understandable, clear, clear language. It's a daily job, and there's no end in sight. But we try.

Photo of the UN News Service-Elena Vapnichnaya in the editorial room of the UN News Service

un.org