Found in Translation

Remember Gorbymania of the late 1980s and early 1990s? One key factor of Gorbachev's popularity in the West was his plain manner of speaking rather than the standard Party gobbledygook of his predecessors. But with all due respect to Mikhail Sergeevich, it wasn't really his words that you loved. It was the balding man with the thick mustache standing beside Gorbachev — his interpreter Pavel Palazhchenko.

For his part, Palazhchenko always dismisses this assertion as "historical hooliganism." But Gorbachev's original Russian speech patterns drowned his ideas in incoherent verbosity, driving domestic audiences to frustration, as they tried — often in vain — to fish out his message. It was only years later that we realized: Gorbachev was frequently vague to leave himself some room for maneuver at home. Palazhchenko, however, made sure that the West heard Gorbachev loud and clear in precise, accurate, and rich idiomatic English — and got his message right.

Palazhchenko is a prince among interpreters and translators. Once a professional interpreter and translator myself, I think I can appreciate the distinction between him and the rest of us. Never would Pavel begrudge sharing the wealth of his knowledge with friends and colleagues. Taking advantage of his generosity, we have been using this walking encyclopedia so unabashedly that I suspect he felt like answering us all in one master stroke. His first dictionary, dealing with the subtleties of political, diplomatic and media English, was published in 1999. Last month, the Moscow-based R. Valent publishers issued a 300-page sequel, complementing the original English-to-Russian section with a new Russian-to-English one. Palazhchenko's My Unsystematic Dictionary bridges the usually unbridgeable gaps of understanding between the Russian and English languages and mentalities.

"It's the tiny little things of a language that make a language," a professor at the Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages used to say. It's the command of these tiny little things that makes or breaks a professional. This is especially true of the new features and phenomena — new words, terms, expressions and slang — that are introduced into a language. "Stay current!" is Palazhchenko's answer, and his dictionary does just that. Its sharply focused and intensely written half-page entries not only give English equivalents to most tricky new Russian words (and vice versa), but interpret their meanings and shed light on their origins with the help of well-chosen quotes. Palazhchenko' analysis of linguistic, cultural and political information makes a fascinating, insightful, and often funny read.

Many translators broke their teeth on, say, vostrebovannost — a vague, and snobbish word widely used in Russian that has a connotation of 'being required', or 'needed,' but does not have the exact English equivalent. Just one of our language tricks to sound intellectual, and make life difficult for foreigners. Palazhchenko's example of usage: a theater director tells his actors that the main criterion of their continuing presence in the company is their vostrebovannost by the repertory. Palazhchenko's comment: "This sounds way more 'elegant' than just saying, "You'll be fired unless there might be roles for you,' but it basically means the same thing."

The dictionary is not Palazhchenko's only contribution to bridging the gaps, or filling in the cultural and historical lacunae. Back in 1997, the Pennsylvania State University Press published My Years With Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, Palazhchenko's account of history in the making in 1985-1991. Any student of that crucial stage of both Russian history and the history of Soviet-American relations will find this work a valuable, unbiased and enlightening source, a real textbook on the era, offered by a mature and sophisticated diplomat.

Ever true to his old boss and friend, Palazhchenko now heads the press-service at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow. However, he still practices his old craft at top level U.N. and E.U. events. The ace interpreter stays current, and so does his dictionary.