On TV screens, we see them almost daily and many times. And we almost never know their first and last names. Here is one that helps two politicians communicate and converse. Here is another at the international film festival telling hundreds of viewers what the characters of the new film are talking about. And the third one helps the football referee to sort out the dispute between the players of two opposing teams.

Translators... Their work is absolutely necessary in literally all spheres of life-in politics, art, sports. And it is by no means boring and routine, as it may seem at first glance. Translators witness many of the most interesting events in world history, culture, sports, etc. There are not many professions where representatives can tell you what they have seen, what they have learned and remembered over the years of working as translators from foreign languages.

However, some of them just could not tell anything about their work for a long time, because they were bound by all sorts of "non-disclosure subscriptions" of classified information, "forms of admissions" to state secrets, and other obligations, the violation of which led to very serious consequences. These are military translators who for decades served (and probably still serve) officers of the Soviet and Russian armies, who train military specialists in many countries in military affairs and the handling of our equipment. They were able to write about what they did, how their work and life were organized, decades later after they had fulfilled their duty and returned to their native country.

Two military translators - Anatoly Nikolaevich Ivanov, who worked in Egypt, and Oleg Ivanovich Teterin ,a "Russian Zanzibari" - took up their memoirs 46 years later (!) after the end of these foreign business trips. Probably, they would have taken it earlier, but I assume that the "sense of self - censorship" brought up in every Soviet person involved in "non-public" activities "worked" - they say that it's not yet time to tell about this and that."

Now it's here. And released in 2011 in Moscow by the publisher And. His book "In Egypt and Zanzibar (1960-1966) "is subtitled" Memoirs of Soviet Military translators". The publication is unique, it is unlikely that such an impressive volume (200 pages) of work has ever been published entirely devoted to this topic, which has been thoroughly "closed" for many years. If the book is revealed in a fundamental and thorough way - after all, the book has only two authors named above, who honestly divided the volume assigned to them by the publisher in half-the memoir essays of each take up about 100 pages, and this is quite a lot for literature of this kind.

Strictly speaking, both essays cannot be called memoirs in the classical interpretation of this word - they are lengthy and detailed interviews: answers to questions asked by A. I. Ivanov and O. I. Teterin by the African scholar, Candidate of Historical Sciences G. V. Shubin. The fact that the interviewer himself knows the subject very well, i.e. events that took place in two African countries during the years when the interviewees worked there, gave the book such qualities as a certain scientific rigor and a sense of extreme reliability.

The first conclusion that inevitably follows from reading this book is that working as a military translator is extremely difficult. The burden that fell on the shoulders of the two authors of the work was no less than that of those whom they, in fact, served-military specialists. Moreover, these shoulders were still weak: one got this job almost immediately after the university, and the second-even before graduating from the university - he had to interrupt his studies for some time. Moreover, both were going to become ordinary civilian specialists, and they did not even think about any military or even "near-war" profession. They were, so to speak, made military interpreters by fate, and they later did not regret this interference of fate in their plans and intentions.

What is only one figure from the book "Service characteristics for an English translator in Ivano" worth?-

va A. N.": working with Soviet and Egyptian pilots, he spent more than 1,2 thousand hours in the air as an on-board translator for 4 years (!) - this is quite a lot even for a professional military pilot. Naturally, he had to master the skills of technical translation, navigate fluently in aviation terminology, and also act more than once in serious critical situations.

And work not only in the air. I had to translate into English a lot of technical instructions, texts of lectures of our specialists that they read to the Egyptian military, training plans and much more. Translators worked, as they say, "to wear out", they had to memorize a lot of names of parts, components and blocks of aircraft.

Unfortunately, the students were often not very diligent. They, in particular, ignored the advice of our specialists to paint the aircraft in a protective color and build so-called "false positions" for aircraft. Our military, who persevered in these matters, made a lot of trouble for themselves. The neglect of the" basics "of military affairs and the Russian experience accumulated during the years of military hard times cost Egypt dearly: in the first hours of the" six-day war " in 1967, the Israelis almost completely destroyed the Egyptian aviation. 35 Soviet military specialists were also killed, which our media, of course, did not write about at that time.

A. I. Ivanov recalls that " ... the people treated us with great respect. As for relations with the officer corps, they were generally quite friendly and businesslike. But they never went into a personal relationship, which was prevented by mutual instructions... As for the recommendations of our officers, they listened carefully everywhere, agreed in words, but often did it in their own way." The author gives examples of the low level of discipline in the Egyptian army, and the carelessness and irresponsibility of its officer corps literally " ... plunged our officers almost into a state of shock."

A. N. Ivanov in Egypt more than once happened to get into various difficult and risky "bindings". For example, to make a long flight once on an airplane with a faulty landing gear. The landing was difficult, the plane already on the ground exploded, although, fortunately, no one was injured. However, it is clear that I had to worry a lot. Shortly before the end of the business trip, Anatoly Nikolaevich got into a very serious-with human casualties-automobile road accident. This alone shows how difficult the life and work of military translators in a foreign country was. And the Order of the "Red Star", which was awarded to A. N. Ivanov as a result of his business trip, is still quite a modest award.

O. I. Teterin was sent to work as a Swahili translator for a group of Soviet military specialists in Zanzibar even before he finished his studies at the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University (now the Institute of Asian and African Countries), where he then had to "finish his studies"for a whole year. The rush was explained by the fact that translators of this language were urgently needed (now it is spoken by HUNDREDS of millions of Africans), but which then hardly more than a dozen Soviet people knew. And, despite the fact that some of the Moscow teachers were brilliant experts in the rare language, the young Moscow "Swahilists" in Zanzibar were hardly understood at first - they spoke a "refined" literary language, not very similar to the generally accepted, popular one. There were no military texts at all. In the first "Swahili-Russian dictionary", published in 1961, military terms were practically absent. It took 2-3 months of daily Swahili communication with the Zanzibaris and our military before the young translator felt more or less confident.

Comparing the texts of two military translators who compiled the book, we can assume that O. I. Teterin had more "degrees of freedom" in Africa than his Egyptian counterpart. In any case, in addition to directly performing his official duties, he found time to read local newspapers and magazines, communicate with many "interesting people", including prominent Tanzanian (Zanzibar was considered an "island part of Tanzania") politicians, as well as local and foreign journalists working on the island, and participate in the preparation of colorful holidays. It is interesting that many Zanzibar acquaintances were subsequently continued -the author of the memoirs met some of the political figures years later, when they came to Moscow on their party and state affairs. And the collected clippings from Zanzibar newspapers helped O. I. Teterin later prepare and defend his PhD thesis and make a successful scientific and journalistic career.

The "Teterin section" of the book contains many relatively small but vivid touches and details that significantly complement our ideas about Africa and, by the way, about our country. Personally, I was very impressed by the description of how the Zanzibari soldiers reacted to the military episodes of the Soviet film "Chapaev" - they, according to the author's memoirs, "...started shouting something, expressed their emotions very directly." As a middle-aged person, I remember very well that the film audience of the Country of Soviets reacted to these episodes in the same way even before the war, although the Komsomol members of the 30s (as well as the Tanzanians of the 60s) watched this picture many times. Apparently, revolutionary enthusiasm is everywhere of the same nature, "imbued" with the same romance...

However, it is a pity that a small but annoying mistake crept into the paragraph dedicated to the Chapaev demonstration in Zanzibar:

the famous machine gunner of the Chapaevsky detachment is still not Anka, but Anka. The absence of a soft sign gives the image an epic, nationwide character, and not "ironically-Odessa", as it unwittingly turned out in a whole very good book. In any case, I was offended for Anka. Although this is an oversight, rather, not the author, but the editor, who simply had to double-check the correct spelling of the name of one of the main characters of a really great film.

It is interesting that the translator Teterin mentions another of his hypostases: at the same time as "afrikavedny", he also received a musical education, and more than once performed in Moscow in concerts as a pianist. "When I left Moscow for Zanzibar," he writes, "I probably only regretted one thing - I would have to forget about the piano for a year..." And indeed, the author failed to find such an instrument on a distant island. Although he eventually heard an old clavichord playing from the window of one of the houses, and with the permission of his mistress, he periodically played it, " ... so as not to lose his piano skills."

The daily life of both military translators was quite modest, as was the reward for hard work.

The authors talk about the everyday side of their lives in some detail, although these sections are not, in my opinion, among the most interesting and fascinating. Much more interesting are the pages devoted to the" technology " of military translation, its specifics and professional problems that the authors of the essays had to solve. This topic is discussed more fully, perhaps, in the essay by O. I. Teterin. The linguistic "discoveries"that he made while working in Zanzibar, and which he described in his memoirs, will certainly be of interest to modern Swahili translators.

The book "In Egypt and Zanzibar (1960-1966)" is lovingly published, it has a memorable cover, each of the two chapters is provided with a small selection of illustrations - photos from the authors ' personal archives.

The authors were able to talk about their work vividly and interestingly, which, of course, is a considerable merit of the interviewer, as I have already written about above. However, I found some of the questions he asked somewhat unfortunate. For example, the question addressed to O. I. Teterin - " Do you remember anything else interesting?" As if all of the above - about 50 pages-was not interesting enough, although I read them, as they say, "binge". Or, for example, such a question, also clearly inappropriate, asked A. N. Ivanov: "How did you cope with the work of a translator?". Of course, he managed, although, as the interlocutor admitted, " ... constantly had to take work from home." And if he couldn't do it, they would probably quickly replace him with a more hardworking and capable one.

At first glance, the published book is of "private interest" - translators, no matter how highly their work is evaluated, are still not politicians. But their memoirs reflect the details of the complex mechanism of our country's relations with African states - such details, as a rule, are not even mentioned in the memoirs of ambassadors, ministers, generals and other "VIPs".

However, without details, the picture of these relations is likely to be not only incomplete, but also significantly distorted. How distorted it is today in many modern films about the Great Patriotic War, where cars of post-war production are rolled out on the screen along military roads, soldiers between battles scoop something similar to "Doshirak" with spoons from pots and in conversations together condemn the cult of Stalin's personality, as if they are already familiar with the decisions of the XX Congress of the CPSU, which it is known only 11 years after the end of the war.

Therefore, it is very important that such works become more and more numerous, the range of topics and authors expands, and at the same time - the range of our knowledge about the passing era, which is interesting and far from fully known-both by contemporaries and their descendants.

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