YOUR ENGLISH SECTION

There was an ordinary Moscow Secondary School No. 579 where I started working as an English teacher some ten years ago. It is now a gymnasium No. 1579 with a tough team of English teachers as well as other humanities’ subjects. Though I am not on the staff any longer, some of my former colleagues and pupils are still good friends of mine. The reason is quite clear there always was – and still is – some creative spirit that made for various extra activities, ‘how-to-find-time’ question being not the central one.
It is not English or math’s lessons that compose my own dearest school recollections. Inevitable and often boring school routine is bound to be the basis of the events, which – I firmly believe factually form the aura of those happy school years. Having five English lessons a week won’t probably make you happy – unless you know it might help you to enter some university – while your participation in a school translation contest or in a theatre performance will stay a highlight for years. Slowly but surely you come to understand that the latter is impossible without the former; and this is perhaps the most important lesson.

Tatiana Surganova

“…We Were Surprised With Our Own Talents…”

Marina Maximova, English teacher: It all started with rather a modest advertisement. It was suggested to pupils to spend their winter holidays with poetry.
The idea of an all-gymnasium translation contest had been put forward at the beginning of the school year – poetry teacher Marina Stakhova being the main “generator”.
It was decided to arrange the competition as follows. At the first stage the pupils were to translate any poem by an English or American author, either one proposed by the teacher or one chosen themselves. As it was a kind of home assignment no time limits were set.
There were only a few enthusiasts at first. Some pupils said there was no use translating a poem after professionals had already done it – what’s the point? Others found it a daunting task. Thanks to the teachers (Olga Kharitonova, Elena Meleshko, Nadezhda Nekrasova, Alexandra Ukhmylina) all hesitations were overcome. Interest towards the event kept rising day by day.
By the beginning of February about 100 works were collected. A group of expert teachers, after a tough evaluation, selected the best. (The translations of “The Three Ravens”, a thirteen century ballad, made by Anastasia Tarasevitch and A. Ovseyenko were among them.)
The second stage was the so-called “live stage”. About 30 semi-finalists were invited to an intramural contest lasting some 80 minutes. They had only dictionaries, some paper, pens and imagination at their disposal. Aspiration was definitely there too.
The results, to my mind, were stunning; the best translation was accomplished in fifty minutes. (A. Golubowitch – “The Rainy Day” by H.W. Longfellow)
It is true that intuition, good memory and strong will are the three things which comprise real talent!

Nastya Tarasevitch, 10 “A” form: I felt as if I was going to a public execution. “Panic! Panic!” – that was all on my mind. Then I saw the poetic texts we were to translate. There were two of them. I liked the first one more. I asked my friend, who was sitting near me, which of the poems she was going to choose. If she had answered: “the first one”, I would have taken the second. She said, “The second, for sure”, so I took up the first one.
I noticed that the people around me were writing something very quickly, with really wild inspiration. I called on my muse and sat quietly looking for possible rhymes. This work seemed so hard that any computer (should it be in my place) would have immediately broken down due to overloading.
When it all ended, however, I had a pleasant feeling of my inspiration being exhausted, and a great wish to begin again.

Sasha Serzhantova, 9 “A” form: I heard about the competition for the first time at the end of December. We were told that if we had free time on our holidays, we could choose any poem to translate into Russian in verses. I think that the best part of the contest was that the time was practically unlimited.
Then, at the beginning of February, the second part was held. The time of day was chosen absolutely correctly – the fifth and the sixth lessons. At this time we are already awake.
The poem I chose was about love; I think it was very beautiful. There were some new words for me, so the first thing I had to do was to look them up to understand the whole thing.
During the two-hour contest our teachers tried to be of help, if there was something difficult for us to understand. To my mind, there were too many of them; as they all wanted to help their pupils, it was rather noisy, especially at the beginning. Little by little, however, everybody got absorbed in creating.
As for me, I didn’t manage to finish my work in time, so, I spent another hour translating. But it was worth the while; I was satisfied with the results.
The next Thursday the winners were named and all of them got diplomas. As I heard the winning translation I was really fascinated. My guess is that even our teachers didn’t expect us to be so interested in the competition. And we were surprised with our own talents…

Olya Tarasova, 9 “A” form: I cannot say that the poems were easy to understand and to translate. It is very good that the teachers allowed us to use dictionaries. But there were too many of them (I mean teachers) in the classroom. They wanted to help their students, but at the same time they distracted them and the others from the work. I think the pupils should think all by themselves!
I chose the poem by Longfellow, because I had read some poems by him earlier. I found his poem to be more interesting, more understandable, and shorter (!). The other one (by Dom Moraes) was rather amusing, because there were some things in it that I found quite funny and a bit stupid. Though I understand that poets like to use different “methods”, I’d rather translate poems without a large number of these. But, of course, a poet would not be a poet without them.
Time was the main problem. Imagine, making “a masterpiece of translation” in two lessons! I think we should have been given not less than four lessons. Best of all, it should have been the whole day – a schoolday I mean.
We all were given beautiful diplomas and useful books as main prizes; but I think it was not very good that the presents were given only to those pupils who had won the first prize. The other contestants were disappointed. Presents should be given to everybody! The first prize, for example, a book; the second – a notebook or a pen; the third – a small rubber; the others – wonderful balloons…