Ukrainian Language Day, 9 November 2021

A good Ukrainian Language and Writing Day to everyone.

The people I want to mention today are the translators working out of Ukrainian into other languages, because it is the harder direction and the less rewarded one.

Translating into your own language is a matter of understanding the source. Translating out of it means producing text that reads naturally to a stranger who has no context, no shared reference and no patience for a footnote. It requires knowing what an outside reader will not know, which is a much less common skill than fluency.

Everything a foreign reader knows about Ukrainian literature, law, business or history passed through one of those people first.

To them, and to the teachers, editors and archivists: today is yours.