The name Chernov is one of the big names in the interpreting profession. Like Kaminker, Herbert, or Seleskovich. So it’s no surprise that when I sat down with Sergei Chernov, now the chief interpreter at the International Monetary Fund, he started with a bit of a disclaimer:

Sergei: I am a second-generation interpreter. And my father was an interpreter and one of, well, what we might call the founding fathers of our profession. Interpretation, anticipation, inferencing, all that good stuff.

Sergei’s father, Ghelly Vasilyevich Chernov, was an eminent interpreter and a leading interpreting scholar. His most well-known publication is probably “Inference and Anticipation in Simultaneous Interpreting” - or “the good stuff”, as Sergei calls it. But there is a second disclaimer, actually, which has to do with Sergei’s job:

What we will be talking about here are my views, my personal views and opinions that do not in any way reflect the views and opinions of the International Monetary Fund.

You are listening to LangFM, and my guest today is conference interpreter Sergei Chernov. Of course, no one starts their career working as the most senior interpreter at one of the leading international organisations. So I was interested in Sergei’s roots.

When I was born in 1965, it was in New York, when my dad was at the United Nations. And I was, I think, less than two when that contract ended for him and we moved, well... back (to me, for the first time) to Moscow. I grew up in Moscow. I grew up speaking Russian. I did not have English from birth or natural bilingualism or anything like that. So English is an acquired language for me. And we did go back to New York, to the U.N., in 1975, when I was ten. And we lived behind the fence, so to speak. In the Soviet compound at the time. We actually lived right outside of the compound. But I went to school there. And, those being the 70s, you know, I had to be accompanied by my parents anytime I would be outside. And so we had very limited interaction with the outside world, except for television and [laughs] some of my horseback riding classes that I had sort of in the outside world. Although, it's interesting, you know, although we lived in New York in the 70s, really, the interaction was pretty much within the Soviet community at the time.

The year Sergei was born, Lyndon B. Johnson became President of a country engaged in a horrible war in Vietnam. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was the first person to walk in space, for 12 minutes. Sergei grew up...

Sergei: … always surrounded by interpreters. You know, there was a time when I used to do my homework in the booth at the U.N. because [laughs] I would, after school, I would take the bus, the Russian mission bus to Manhattan. And I would wait for my father to finish his work. And I also had a karate class there. And I would spend my free time or the time that I needed to kill in the booth. I would sit there and it was an empty booth and would be doing my homework. I would be observing interpreters at work. I would spend a lot of time in the interpreters’ lounge where at that time, you know, people were playing chess and, you know, talking to interpreters. And even in the apartment building where we lived, our neighbour was Pavel Palazhchenko, who then became Gorbachev's interpreter, famous Pavel. This was my life, you know, basically surrounded by interpreters and language professionals all my life. My mom also. She was a teacher of foreign languages. She taught Spanish and Romanian at Moscow University. I grew up there. I mean, you cannot even imagine, you know, since my dad was also working on his doctorate dissertation. And so our breakfast conversations were about presuppositions and implicatures. [laughs] But, yes, you know, that was of course, it was America, you know, it was formative years. And I went back to Moscow. It was 1980. So I had to finish the 9th and 10th, so to speak; high school. In Moscow. And so this was 1980. This was the summer of 1980. The famous Moscow Olympics.

… further accused of rudely interfering with Olympic affairs. The roots of the nyet clearly go back to President Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. East-West relations have further… 

The 1980 Olympic Games were remarkable, historic, because they were the first to happen in Eastern Europe, the only Summer Olympics (until today) to be held in a Slavic language-speaking country; and - until China in 2008, the only Olympic Games in a communist country. Only eighty nations participated, while 66 countries, led by the United States, boycotted the event because of the war in Afghanistan. For people in the Soviet Union, this international event, however, was a window out into the world.

The Olympics were quite open, you know, at that time. You know, you go round Moscow and there are Coca-Cola stands everywhere. But that went away very soon afterwards. You know, you switch on the television and you have Channel 1, Channel 2 and Channel 3. [laughs] Naturally, I started looking for other sources of information. I started tuning into “Voice of America” in English, and actually got into trouble in my Russian school, Soviet school in Moscow, because they asked me to do current events. And I dutifully looked through Pravda and Izvestia, and I did not find anything of interest. So I tuned in to shortwave, got all the latest updates about, you know, whatever it was at the time, the Iran-Contra scandal and those things. And, you know, did the current events and immediately was summoned to the principal's office for anti-Soviet propaganda. The Soviet Union was still a very closed place at that time.

Thankfully, Sergei can look back at that episode and laugh about it now. Having experienced New York in the 1970s, having grown up in the international profession that is conference interpreting, knowing the UN, and then living in Soviet Russia, Sergei kind of saw both sides of the Iron Curtain.

With his family background in languages and natural curiosity, you might say he was destined to become an interpreter.

Sergei: I don't think my parents gave me much of a choice, to be honest with you. It was a pretty much straight path into the profession. Neither my father nor my mom themselves personally did anything in terms of... I was probably the one who rejected any help or assistance and participation. So I tried to do things on my own there.

We already know how it all played out. But at the time, it wasn’t that straight-forward:

Sergei: I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do with it. My dad especially wanted me to go into research. He really insisted that I go for the PhD. But this was the time; now we're in the late 80s, where perestroika is in full swing and things are happening. A lot of changes in the country. And I was not interested in that at the time, at all. So I said, I want to go and start interpreting. I want to be a practitioner rather than go into theory. 

And luckily, the Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages, where I went, was a place where you could, you know, sort of explore what you wanted to do. It had all kinds of classes, we did translation, we did interpreting. You could choose your languages.

Sergei had to interrupt his training to serve in the Soviet Army for two years. When he came back, he graduated from the Maurice Thorez Institute with English and Spanish. And then continued his studies:

Sergei: I went to the U.N. interpreting school that we had in Moscow, Which was quite exclusive, amazing training. Oh, my goodness. This was the best training ever you can imagine. I mean, now I compare, let’s say, look at Monterey, look at University of Maryland, where I now teach on Saturdays a little bit... The system is such that you don't get your six hours of practice every day. In the booth or just, you know, practice, practice, practice, which is what we had. And we also got the keys to the training room. So we practiced for eight hours and nine hours and ten hours, and as long as it was necessary. But also the motivation. If you think about it, this is still the Soviet Union. You have a group of six in the simultaneous group. And by the end of the training, right, what do you do? You’re posted to New York, Geneva, Vienna, nice places. So this was THE motivation: to be able to pass that U.N. exam at the end.

Alas, history was about to take a huge and unexpected turn.

News report (original source no longer available): “Gorbachov’s dreams of holding the Soviet Union together may have received a death blow today. The Union’s three Slavic republics announced they’re forming a separate Commonwealth of Independent States. Russia, the Ukraine and Belorusia control much of the Soviet Union’s power; enough to challenge the rapidly fading strength of Gorbachov’s central government. 

Sergei: When we were about to finish the training, the Soviet Union started collapsing in earnest.

News report: … halfway through its evening news when it got the first details of the agreement signed in Minsk. Quoting from it, the anchorwoman announced: “The Soviet Union as a subject of international and geopolitical reality no longer exists.”

Sergei: This whole Soviet system of secondments that they had back then to the U.N. through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs kind of collapsed. And so we got the training, but we didn't get to go to New York and Geneva and Vienna, and the nice places.

News report: … Open to other former republics to join, it will be headquartered not in Moscow, but in the Belorusian capital Minsk.

Sergei: I stayed in Moscow and after a couple of months of painful reflection, unpacked my bags that were ready to go to New York and started freelancing. And that was a different world.

[Music]

Sergei: It felt like, you know, the world was finally opening up. It felt really great. I was at that right age at the time when, you know, all these changes sort of came naturally and were quite welcome by us. There’s, you know, that kind of... the lost generation of people about ten years older than me who, you know, maybe were sort of the dissidents back in the 70s and then also sort of welcomed all the changes, but then weren't able to adapt to the new life in the 90s and post-Soviet society, where it was all, you know, capitalism and market forces and a very different world. And some of those people are saying, oh, I want socialism back. Now, you hear a lot about that. That also created tremendous opportunities for interpreters, because, of course, when the country opens up, you have an influx of foreigners, from business people who want your services for oil and gas. The first Model U.N. came at that time to Russia, can you imagine? [laughs]

[Music ends]

Sergei: I started freelancing, but I also found a full-time job for a short period of time with The Washington Post Moscow bureau. David Remnick, who is now editor-in-chief of New Yorker magazine, was the bureau chief at the time. And so through the eyes of The Washington Post Moscow bureau, I saw the real changes happening, you know, the attempted coup against Gorbachev, the collapse of the Soviet Union. So this was the time that I really got to see everything first hand, you know, being on those barricades, and the Moscow White House, all that stuff. I told David at the time - because he would ask me to interpret, you know, say, live coverage from the State Duma deliberations or, you know, the parliament and things like that. And so I would just switch on the live transmission on television, I would put on my earphones and I would interpret. And he would sit there with his computer and he would type. And I said, David, if I could type that fast, I'd be a millionaire by now. You know, for official situations, they would prefer interpretation, translation; it made it faster for them. Everything had to be in real time. They found this interesting way of using my interpretation skills and their extremely fast typing skills to turn those news pieces around very, very fast.

It was very, you know, up close, right? And these changes were unraveling right before our eyes. And yet until the last moment, I don't think, in my mind, I could imagine that the Soviet Union would actually collapse. It seemed very unrealistic, but when it happened, it just happened. It just happened.

So many things “just happened” during those tumultuous times in Russia. Helping American journalists cover all that was going on was probably about as interesting as it gets. And yet...

Sergei: … freelancing would be much more interesting and... also from the financial standpoint. So I quit that. I still did some work for them as a freelancer, but I started working for many different organizations and just kind of threw myself out into the open freelance market. And it took me all around the former Soviet Union. I mean, from Sakhalin for oil and gas projects, or beyond the Arctic Circle for the same, or to the deserts of Turkmenistan, you know, with the World Bank missions and the Caucuses, the Central Asian countries - everywhere! I really got to know the former Soviet Union at that time quite, quite well. This was an amazing experience. It lasted for about four years. I did all kinds of things. I mentioned the model U.N., you know, other conferences. There was a lot of Russian-American contacts at the time. Space exploration, oil and gas, all kinds of people coming from northern California with their humanistic philosophy lectures and esoteric training sessions for all kinds of people. You can imagine. And I remember there was one conference - something about esoteric training - where they would be playing flutes to the grasshoppers and channeling light through different mirrors, and all that in the context of some humanistic philosophy and inventing their own terminology. It was a lot of fun; linguistically it was quite challenging, actually. [laughs]

Then the IMF and World Bank missions started coming in. And I took their test. So they came and selected a pool of freelancers. And I became part of that and started working for the IMF missions until basically around nineteen ninety three early 94 when I was offered a job at the World Bank. And I went to Washington. And I've been there since.

Talking to Sergei about this personal and professional life, I couldn’t help but notice how he and his family seemed to be travelling back and forth between the Soviet Union, or later: Russia, and the United States. Where did he think he belonged? Or was it neither here, nor there?

Sergei: It was a little bit like that because I want to say that I felt at home in both places. Also at the time I got my U.S. citizenship back, if you will. And I said, do I need to take an oath or something? They said, no, it's not that we're giving you citizenship. It's just a recognition of the fact that you've always been an American citizen, you know?  So imagine that circumstance.

I was offered a job, a freelance assignment, with the Russian Ministry of Aviation to go to Florida for a month where they were going to negotiate the installation of American avionics on Russian airplanes. And they asked me, oh, you need to give your passport, you know, to process the visa. And I didn't, of course, need a visa at the time already. So I told them, no, I already have a visa. No, you don't need to worry about it. But I had no clue how it was going to work. And so I went to the airport with the two passports. And put them both on the desk of the immigration officer. And immediately the red light came on and comrade major steps out and says, you know, what is this? And the soldier says, well, there’s a Russian passport with no American visa, an American passport with no Russian visa. What do we do? The major looks at me and says, you know how come? I say, well, you know, I was born in the US, but my parents were Soviet citizens. So he says, oh, don't worry. So, soldier, you treat his American passport as his visa, let him go. And then on arrival, Fort Lauderdale International Airport, was my first time after many years back to the US. And I land, of course, I also was a little bit apprehensive, what was going to happen now that I'm with this brand new American passport that has no visa stamps or anything. And this immigration officer: “Welcome home, son.” And that was the realization, that moment, that, you know, this is the second home. Eventually I think I'm now - 25 years later - realizing that by now maybe home was neither here nor there. Although it's also in both places. But you kind of feel a little bit as a foreigner in both places.

In any case, Sergei found a new professional home. First, at the World Bank, and then at the International Monetary Fund.

Sergei: So I took a position at the World Bank and it wasn't until 2000 that I moved to the IMF where I am now. So we have a service where we have interpreters and translators, and translators are pure translators. But anybody who is an interpreter has to be an interpreter/translator. There isn't enough interpreting work every day at headquarters to have a dedicated interpretation service and therefore all interpreters have to translate. But then the chief interpreter can pull out interpreters from their translation assignments any time something happens at headquarters or you need to send someone on mission. And of course, for our annual meetings, the spring  meetings, we have a separate arrangement where it's a huge team of interpreters that needs to be assembled for that, a combination of staff and freelancers.

In terms of language regime, neither the IMF nor the World Bank have official or, well, official languages. The working language is English in both organizations. The lack of official languages, basically means that the language policy is quite relaxed. So anything goes. You need Georgian, you get Georgian; you need Vietnamese, you get Vietnamese. Although for the annual meetings, there is a more restricted list of languages, which is pretty much U.N. plus Portuguese.

One thing had stuck with Sergei from his freelancer days in post-Soviet Russia: missions. That’s interpreter jargon for a business trip, where we accompany one or more people outside of comfortable, climate-controlled meeting rooms.

I've done a lot, a lot of missions. Hard to even count. This was really my favorite kind of work, because this is the environment where the role of the interpreter is incredibly important. And you can feel it every single day. It's a very intense, an IMF mission is a very intense assignment of about two weeks where you are in the country with a group of IMF economists who are negotiating either a program - what we call a program, a financial assistance package - or just taking stock of the country's economy - which we call Article 4 surveillance missions, etc. And in that environment, the interpreter also does translation and has really the ability to experience interpretation in all modes.

I’m nodding heavily as Sergei tells me this. I also really enjoy the direct contact with clients.

But again, in the context of my work back at the World Bank and now the IMF, we have a lot of interaction with our principals, with our clients. Because a lot of interpreting happens outside of the booth. There's a lot of bilateral meetings, a lot of missions. In fact, that's the overwhelming majority of the work that we do - outside of the booths in very close contact with our clients.

From consecutive or whispering during the actual meeting to simultaneous, maybe at outreach events or press conferences, to written translation late night in the hotel room. The whole package! This is what I like, is really to be able to exercise every muscle. Not just be in the booth and be far away, detached from your clients, but to be there, to be on the ground, to see the results of your work. It's an amazing feeling, actually.

What can I say, but: Yes, exactly. Being able to exercise all interpreting muscles is what makes this job so much fun.

It was a real pleasure to ask Sergei about his professional career so far. We also talked in detail about the history of interpreting… in Russia. So while you’re here, I suggest you listen to the bonus part of this episode. There are lots of links and book recommendations that you should also check out.

For today though, this has been LangFM with Sergei Chernov and me, Alexander Drechsel. All earlier and future episodes of this little podcast can be found on my website and in pretty much any podcast app. If you like the show, do recommend it to a friend or colleague. I’ll talk to you soon, on LangFM!