Translator Profile: Lucy Gunderson, CT

Many of you may know Russian-into-English translator Lucy Gunderson from her leadership with the ATA Divisions Committee and the Slavic Languages Division. I had the pleasure of speaking with Lucy last month, and hearing about how she has navigated her career among shifting geopolitics was very moving. The challenges she has experienced in her business are relatable, and she has met them with resourcefulness. Read on for more.

How did you learn your languages?

I started studying Russian in college. I had studied French for eight years in school and wanted a change. Despite struggling mightily through the first semester, I developed a strong connection to the language and the literature. I ended up spending my junior year abroad in Russia, witnessing firsthand the Soviet Union’s collapse in December 1991. After graduation, I returned to Russia to teach English for three years on and off throughout the 1990s. This immersive linguistic and cultural experience has been key to my success as a translator.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

I wish I had pursued a double major or a minor in college. Instead, I just focused on Russian language and literature. I think the focus on a different subject area, like government, for example, would have helped me when I was getting started as a translator.

I also wish I had had some experience working for a language services company, probably as a project manager. I think a job like that would have taught me a lot of the things I ended up having to figure out on my own (translation tools, sales and marketing, general business skills).

Was there a particular challenge that you had to overcome to stay in business or keep growing? What was it? How did you deal with it?

It feels incredibly selfish of me to say this considering how many people have suffered and died needlessly, but the war in Ukraine has had a profound effect on my business. In the early 2010s, I began to focus almost exclusively on human rights. I developed amazing relationships with a handful of direct clients working in this field and had quite a bit of satisfying – if emotionally difficult – work. I stopped hearing from these clients almost immediately after the invasion. I finally contacted my best client and asked if everything was okay. They said that the situation had become very “complicated” for human rights nongovernmental organizations operating in Russia and that they had to be very careful about their work. And that’s saying a lot, since their situation had hardly been easy before. They also said they had lost a great deal of funding since this money was being diverted to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. So I lost a major part of my business almost overnight. I also used to do a lot of legal translation. That continued for a bit after the war started because of sanctions-related lawsuits, but that has also dried up now.

The point is that you can do terrific work and have gratifying client relationships and still see your business collapse. There is so much that is beyond our control.

Fortunately for me personally, I spent the first two years of the pandemic working on my business, attending continuing education webinars, staying active on social media, and generally just reaching out to people and staying in touch. When I lost those NGO and legal clients and felt like I might have to change careers, I was offered a part-time job editing and translating for a weekly digest of news articles from the Russian press. This opportunity came to me through connections I had sustained and nurtured during the pandemic.

What kind of projects have you been working on lately?

I actually just started working with a new client – a German university that is publishing an archive of Holocaust documents. It’s an ongoing project, so I get a new batch of documents every time I turn a batch in. The subject matter is extremely difficult, of course, but I’m finding that focusing on the linguistic aspects of the documents makes it a bit easier to process. Otherwise, I have my regular digest work and a trickle of work from law firms, NGOs, and a couple of upstanding translation agencies.

Do you use machine translation at all in your workflow?

One of my clients uses Phrase, which incorporates MT. I find it helps speed up my work because I can look over at it and use it as a guide if needed, but I don’t import the MT into my Target column.

I am actually also able to use MT a bit for the Holocaust project. Some of the documents I work on are handwritten, which, as we all know, can be difficult to decipher. Since the English-language volume I’m working on has already been published in German I’m able to run the German translation of the sentence I’m having trouble understanding through MT. I don’t use that as my translation, of course, but it does help me decipher the word or words I can’t make out. So that’s an interesting use of MT I hadn’t considered before.

I don’t have much interest in artificial intelligence, but I do keep up with its development. To be honest, the environmental cost of it seems so high that I have trouble using it just to save some time on certain tasks.

In your opinion, what’s the most important thing a translator or interpreter can do to improve as a businessperson?

The best business advice I can give is to remember that your business is your own. You decide what kind of work you want to do. You decide how much work you need/want to do. You decide how much you need/want to earn. Certainly listen to a wide range of advice, but never forget that at the end of the day, your business is for you and no one else. I fell into the trap of comparing myself to other translators I viewed as “more successful,” and this hampered my growth for quite some time. Everyone has different circumstances, so strive for what you need to achieve for yourself, not what conventional wisdom says you need to achieve.

What are your current business goals?

As my kids get older (one is a senior in college, the other, a junior in high school), I find my business goals are becoming less ambitious, and I’m enjoying this so much! I’m earning a bit less than I’d like to from translation work right now, but I’ve also moved into a new area: I’m renting out the house I inherited from my parents. I have a lot to learn, but I’m hopeful that this will eventually free up more of my time. My biggest business goal, though, is to finish a mystery that I started writing two years ago. I’m having a severe case of writer’s block right now, but I hope to break through that!

About the Author

Lucy Gunderson, CT, is an ATA-certified Russian>English translator specializing in journalistic, human rights, and legal translation. Lucy has been an editor and translator for Current Digest of the Russian Press for the past four years. She has also translated for non-governmental organizations for many years and follows the human rights situation in Eurasia closely. She has presented on human rights translation for ATA and the New York Circle of Translators.

She is a past chair of ATA’s Divisions Committee (2015-2019) and a former administrator of the Association’s Slavic Languages Division (2011-2015).

Tricia Perry is a medical translator and editor working from Spanish and Portuguese into English. She holds a BA in Spanish and Anthropology from Smith College and an MA in Media Studies from the New School. She earned a Certificate in Translation Studies from the University of Chicago Graham School, and is ATA certified for Spanish into English. Based in New York, Tricia lived and studied in Costa Rica and did research on HIV/AIDS-related discrimination in Brazil on a Fulbright grant. She is currently a member of the ATA Business Practices Education Committee.