Vign07(20140627) Shipyard Interpreter (7 of 15)

1991

Though, it happened at last – our city became opened for all the world, no more military restrictions.

This has revealed a lots of problems – nobody knows anything about international marketing, nobody speaks English, etc.

Well-known aircraft carrier “Varyag” (“Admiral Kuznetsov”) had been built in our Shipyard, and now it is сaled - Chinese Navy's aircreaft carrier ''Liaonin" :)

That day there were “three men in a boat” – Shipyard Deputy Director, foreign guest from France Press and me as the interpreter.

We have investigated this huge rusty half-dismantled ‘ogre’, and there were lots of questions from French correspondent. He was the first foreigner who had been allowed to see this aircraft сarrier ‘face to face’.

The rumor have spread across the shipyard: Chinese want to buy it to use as the …floating casino. Everybody considered this fact to be the good joke.          

This extremely big high-tech construction can be compared to floating casino as the car-assembling conveyer can be compared to your grandmother’s woolen socks knitting :).

The next guest named Robert came from Oslo with his leg in a cast and walked lame across the shipyard all day long.

Nodding to the old USSR propaganda slogan “Крепи мир трудом своим (Make peace stronger with your own labor)”, he said with the smile: ”This slogan is extremely actual at the military shipyard”.

Next person from Lloyd came to make the reference document about our local trawlers. Local trawlers were not fit for international market because of the asbestos thermo insulation that is dangerous for human health.

My own interest in this case was to try the trick - reading aloud the final reference in Russian, though it was written in English, to try ‘on the fly’ translation. My trick turned out to be successful. ‘On the fly’ translation goes OK for technical needs.

Many local/foreign ‘guests’ of the Shipyard have tried to look as very important persons having money enough to buy an aircraft carrier or at least trawler, but they had one thing in common – when it came to payments, they vanished forever, leaving us only an ready undersigned multimillion dollar contracts. All of translators/interpreters had the good training in contracts composing and discussing, and that was the only use of it! :)    

(c) Victor Sergeyev, 2014
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