Working on a heritage language (Russian) (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Working on a heritage language (Russian)
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doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English, Russian, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai	Message 1 of 6 28 December 2013 at 6:29am \| IP Logged
	Hey everyone, So recently, I've been thinking about taking a required test to become a court interpreter in Russian. I speak Russian fluently as I was raised bilingually (Russian/English). For a heritage speaker, I think I speak Russian quite well. I don't have an accent, my grammar is good, I know enough words, etc. I've had Russian people who don't know me well ask if I left Russia 1-2 years ago (when in fact, I left when I was 4 months old) - because I sound good enough to pass for someone who was raised there. To make a long story short, I feel completely at ease speaking Russian. The problem is that most of the Russian I know, I learned from talking to my family and the occasional pop music / TV shows. So my vocabulary is good enough for those purposes, but not good enough to deal with legalese, formal and academic terms, etc. To make a long story short, I'm thinking of spending several months studying for this test. I would really like to work as a court interpreter - I'm a university student and it's an excellent job. Not many hours and a very high rate for the few hours you do get. My question is: how should I go about studying for this test? Besides weekends, I will have Mondays off this coming semester, and I'm thinking of spending several intense hours each Monday to work on my Russian. What would you do if you were in my situation? I have my eye on this Russian<->English legal dictionary (http://tinyurl.com/pkp48s6). Some other ideas that I have: Finding online audio clips [in English] that talk about the news or about legal cases specifically, and practicing translating them orally into Russian, perhaps recording my "answers" from the above ^ exercise with Audactiy and getting feedback from Russians raised in Russia via the internet or via Skype, Listening to Russian news radio/podcasts and looking up any words that I don't know Would love to hear other suggestions. 1 person has voted this message useful
doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English, Russian, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai	Message 2 of 6 28 December 2013 at 6:37am \| IP Logged
	Just want to quickly add that when I was in 8th grade, we had a student in our class who had just come from Russia and couldn't speak English at all. I basically spent the entire year whispering translations into her ear when the teacher was talking, so she knew what was going on. I had to paraphrase a lot of things, because a) the teacher spoke quickly and b) some terms were specific to the local school system and didn't translate well. But I managed. To make a long story short, I have a pretty good aural memory and can think quickly on my feet. So interpretation (of any kind) is something I feel confident I could do well. The only real issue IMHO is my somewhat limited vocabulary in Russian. That is what I need to work on first and foremost. 1 person has voted this message useful
Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6756 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French	Message 3 of 6 28 December 2013 at 2:45pm \| IP Logged
	I don't know much about court interpreting in the US specifically, so please take my advice with a pinch of salt. Here are some of my ideas: - before you start practicing interpreting audio clips about legal cases into Russian, try doing it the other way round. - find a good textbook for law/pre-law students - in Russian, preferably about the US law. Reading it should help you a great deal with developing an understanding for legal matters and should allow you to learn a lot of vocabulary. - look for a decent vocabulary textbook for legal Russian. I am not sure if there is something like that (perhaps a legal English textbook for Russian speakers could do the trick, depending on its content) but if you manage to find a good one, this will help you a lot. I have a textbook of this kind for legal German (for some time, I have been thinking about getting ceritified as a court interpreter and translator of this language), and it includes lots of terms (with explanations), short readings, collocations (there are lots of them in legal language, and some are not obvious at all), translation exercises. - look for preparation materials for US court interpreters - if I am not mistaken, there are e.g. recordings of mock trials made for this purpose. - read high quality newspapers in Russian (apart from news radio/podcasts). Feedback on your interpretations from Russians raised in Russia is a great idea. You could also learn a lot from feedback of a US-based Russian court interpreter, if you could get in touch with one. If the US certification process for court interpreters is anything like the one in my country, terminology is definitely of great importance - and Russians from Russia might have little idea about what the right Russian equivalents of US legal terms are. 4 persons have voted this message useful
Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4087 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek	Message 4 of 6 28 December 2013 at 3:24pm \| IP Logged
	I'd strongly recommend you to read. If you have problems with vocabulary in the language you know quite well, there is no point of working with vocabulary lists, as I think. It doesn't work for me in Russian and, I'm afraid, in English too - it seems somewhat out. Look for bilingual texts, get some textbooks of required topics... You can try to walk in from the side of Russian and read some guides and textbooks for Russian-English interpreters, whose first language is Russian. For example, quick search lead me to this book: "Перевод с английского языка на русский язык" (Е.А. Мисуно, И.В. Шаблыгина, 2009 год). And I'm not an foreign language faculty student, so I don't know what they are usually using. I do meet a lot of new words just by reading myself - and, yes, I'm talking about Russian. And, of course, the greatest thing ever possible is to find a person involved with courts and other legal stuff whose first language is Russian. I'm pretty sure that if you do speak and understand Russian good, there would be no problems to agree on a rule "No English allowed". Search through forums and social networks, find someone and use Skype for further help. Last but not the least - try to improve your Russian in common and try not to concentrate on some small branch. I hope it's not hard for heritage speaker. P.S. Try to translate my post into Russian. Then send me the result, I think, it would be fun (I was mostly thinking in English and I don't know how I would put it in Russian until I'll think about it) :) 1 person has voted this message useful
doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English, Russian, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai	Message 5 of 6 10 January 2014 at 5:29pm \| IP Logged
	I'm sorry for the extremely long delay - I was away on vacation for a bit, and when I got back, I had some TAC-related things I wanted to deal with first. I called the woman who looks at people's applications to become a court interpreter and schedules tests. She said that they strongly prefer people who already have experience, and that no, interpreting for friends/family doesn't count. To be honest, I'm starting to have second thoughts about this whole thing. If I were to submit an application, I would only do so after several months of intense work on my Russian (because my current level isn't enough). What if I spend several months working on this intensively, only to be rejected because a) I don't have prior experience and/or b) because I'm still not good enough? It just seems like a huge amount of effort for this one specific thing. There is no other context in which I would need the extra Russian vocabulary. The amount of Russian I know now is enough to communicate comfortably with my family, which is all I ever use Russian for. 1 person has voted this message useful
Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4087 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek	Message 6 of 6 10 January 2014 at 6:39pm \| IP Logged
	I guess, now it's down to a simple question: do you want to work with your Russian or not? It's all about motivation. If you don't want to invest time and effort into getting just a chance to get a job then you can forget about it straight away, of course. But кто не рискует, тот не пьет шампанское, I must say... 2 persons have voted this message useful

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doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English, Russian, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai	Message 1 of 6 28 December 2013 at 6:29am \| IP Logged
	Hey everyone, So recently, I've been thinking about taking a required test to become a court interpreter in Russian. I speak Russian fluently as I was raised bilingually (Russian/English). For a heritage speaker, I think I speak Russian quite well. I don't have an accent, my grammar is good, I know enough words, etc. I've had Russian people who don't know me well ask if I left Russia 1-2 years ago (when in fact, I left when I was 4 months old) - because I sound good enough to pass for someone who was raised there. To make a long story short, I feel completely at ease speaking Russian. The problem is that most of the Russian I know, I learned from talking to my family and the occasional pop music / TV shows. So my vocabulary is good enough for those purposes, but not good enough to deal with legalese, formal and academic terms, etc. To make a long story short, I'm thinking of spending several months studying for this test. I would really like to work as a court interpreter - I'm a university student and it's an excellent job. Not many hours and a very high rate for the few hours you do get. My question is: how should I go about studying for this test? Besides weekends, I will have Mondays off this coming semester, and I'm thinking of spending several intense hours each Monday to work on my Russian. What would you do if you were in my situation? I have my eye on this Russian<->English legal dictionary (http://tinyurl.com/pkp48s6). Some other ideas that I have: Finding online audio clips [in English] that talk about the news or about legal cases specifically, and practicing translating them orally into Russian, perhaps recording my "answers" from the above ^ exercise with Audactiy and getting feedback from Russians raised in Russia via the internet or via Skype, Listening to Russian news radio/podcasts and looking up any words that I don't know Would love to hear other suggestions. 1 person has voted this message useful
doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English, Russian, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai	Message 2 of 6 28 December 2013 at 6:37am \| IP Logged
	Just want to quickly add that when I was in 8th grade, we had a student in our class who had just come from Russia and couldn't speak English at all. I basically spent the entire year whispering translations into her ear when the teacher was talking, so she knew what was going on. I had to paraphrase a lot of things, because a) the teacher spoke quickly and b) some terms were specific to the local school system and didn't translate well. But I managed. To make a long story short, I have a pretty good aural memory and can think quickly on my feet. So interpretation (of any kind) is something I feel confident I could do well. The only real issue IMHO is my somewhat limited vocabulary in Russian. That is what I need to work on first and foremost. 1 person has voted this message useful
Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6756 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, English^B2, German^C2, Spanish^B2, Dutch, Swedish, French	Message 3 of 6 28 December 2013 at 2:45pm \| IP Logged
	I don't know much about court interpreting in the US specifically, so please take my advice with a pinch of salt. Here are some of my ideas: - before you start practicing interpreting audio clips about legal cases into Russian, try doing it the other way round. - find a good textbook for law/pre-law students - in Russian, preferably about the US law. Reading it should help you a great deal with developing an understanding for legal matters and should allow you to learn a lot of vocabulary. - look for a decent vocabulary textbook for legal Russian. I am not sure if there is something like that (perhaps a legal English textbook for Russian speakers could do the trick, depending on its content) but if you manage to find a good one, this will help you a lot. I have a textbook of this kind for legal German (for some time, I have been thinking about getting ceritified as a court interpreter and translator of this language), and it includes lots of terms (with explanations), short readings, collocations (there are lots of them in legal language, and some are not obvious at all), translation exercises. - look for preparation materials for US court interpreters - if I am not mistaken, there are e.g. recordings of mock trials made for this purpose. - read high quality newspapers in Russian (apart from news radio/podcasts). Feedback on your interpretations from Russians raised in Russia is a great idea. You could also learn a lot from feedback of a US-based Russian court interpreter, if you could get in touch with one. If the US certification process for court interpreters is anything like the one in my country, terminology is definitely of great importance - and Russians from Russia might have little idea about what the right Russian equivalents of US legal terms are. 4 persons have voted this message useful
Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4087 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek	Message 4 of 6 28 December 2013 at 3:24pm \| IP Logged
	I'd strongly recommend you to read. If you have problems with vocabulary in the language you know quite well, there is no point of working with vocabulary lists, as I think. It doesn't work for me in Russian and, I'm afraid, in English too - it seems somewhat out. Look for bilingual texts, get some textbooks of required topics... You can try to walk in from the side of Russian and read some guides and textbooks for Russian-English interpreters, whose first language is Russian. For example, quick search lead me to this book: "Перевод с английского языка на русский язык" (Е.А. Мисуно, И.В. Шаблыгина, 2009 год). And I'm not an foreign language faculty student, so I don't know what they are usually using. I do meet a lot of new words just by reading myself - and, yes, I'm talking about Russian. And, of course, the greatest thing ever possible is to find a person involved with courts and other legal stuff whose first language is Russian. I'm pretty sure that if you do speak and understand Russian good, there would be no problems to agree on a rule "No English allowed". Search through forums and social networks, find someone and use Skype for further help. Last but not the least - try to improve your Russian in common and try not to concentrate on some small branch. I hope it's not hard for heritage speaker. P.S. Try to translate my post into Russian. Then send me the result, I think, it would be fun (I was mostly thinking in English and I don't know how I would put it in Russian until I'll think about it) :) 1 person has voted this message useful
doubleUelle Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 3888 days ago 67 posts - 95 votes Speaks: English, Russian, French, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Thai	Message 5 of 6 10 January 2014 at 5:29pm \| IP Logged
	I'm sorry for the extremely long delay - I was away on vacation for a bit, and when I got back, I had some TAC-related things I wanted to deal with first. I called the woman who looks at people's applications to become a court interpreter and schedules tests. She said that they strongly prefer people who already have experience, and that no, interpreting for friends/family doesn't count. To be honest, I'm starting to have second thoughts about this whole thing. If I were to submit an application, I would only do so after several months of intense work on my Russian (because my current level isn't enough). What if I spend several months working on this intensively, only to be rejected because a) I don't have prior experience and/or b) because I'm still not good enough? It just seems like a huge amount of effort for this one specific thing. There is no other context in which I would need the extra Russian vocabulary. The amount of Russian I know now is enough to communicate comfortably with my family, which is all I ever use Russian for. 1 person has voted this message useful
Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4087 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek	Message 6 of 6 10 January 2014 at 6:39pm \| IP Logged
	I guess, now it's down to a simple question: do you want to work with your Russian or not? It's all about motivation. If you don't want to invest time and effort into getting just a chance to get a job then you can forget about it straight away, of course. But кто не рискует, тот не пьет шампанское, I must say... 2 persons have voted this message useful