Over winter break, juniors Chase Philpot and Peter Sisson left Moscow, where they had been studying on the Dickinson-in-Moscow program for the fall semester, and headed towards Lake Baikal-the world's largest freshwater lake, in the heart of Siberia.

Of their trip, Chase writes:

"I decided to trek eastward on the Siberian Railroad with my buddy Peter, going three days by train to our first destination Irkutsk, a small city not far from the Mongolian border famous for its prime location near Lake Baikal.  After a week of exploration in negative 40 Celsius weather, getting lost in Siberian forests, and riding on a dog sleigh (those last two are unconnected), we travelled further to Vladivostok, Russia's largest eastern port. After snowboarding and walking out onto the frozen Pacific Ocean, Peter and I split up and I took my time returning to Moscow by train stopping in Blagoveshensk, Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, and Novosibirsk.  I recommend the Siberian Railroad experience to all! It is not as scary as it sounds! My trip was made most memorable because I used the "couchsurfing" website. Instead of staying in hostels, I found complete strangers in each city willing to take me in for a few days.  Each experience was unique and now I have good friends all over Russia."

Peter added that "on our trip, I came to realize that Russians are good, kind-hearted, and open people. They are willing to share their opinions and experiences with you and will listen to you share yours. The stereotype of the Russian people could not be further from the truth. My best memories from my semester abroad came from this trip." 

Peter returned to Dickinson for the spring semester; Chase will spend the rest of the 2012-2013 academic year in Moscow.

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Poet Vera Pavlova and her translator Steven Seymour, who also happens to be her husband, read a selection of poetry in Russian and English translation in the Biblio Café on Valentine's Day 2013. 

Seniors Alex North, Caitlin Moriarty, and Maria Smirnova also read translations of Pavlova's newest, unpublished poems. They had prepared these translations together with Pavlova and Seymour earlier in the week as part of their senior seminar in translation.  

Mackenzie Stricklin '16, a second-semester Russian student, attended the reading: "It was great to hear the poems in their original form and I loved how they sounded, even if I couldn't understand every word. Vera Pavlova was so animated while she was reciting her poems. She moved her arms around, made eye contact, and used interesting intonation, which made the poems fun to listen to. Plus the poetry was beautifully written and translated."

Barrett Ziegler, a first-year Russian student and a poet himself, thought that "hearing her recite was beautiful. Even being unable to grasp everything she said, the rhythm was something that crossed all linguistic boundaries."

World-renowned Russian poet Vera Pavlova, the author of 18 collections of poetry translated into 22 languages, visited Dickinson this week. She was joined by her translator and partner Steven Seymour, former translator and interpreter for the US Department of State. Both are longtime friends of the Dickinson Russian Department, having visited back in 2004 as part of the annual poetry festival Semana Poetica. During their most recent visit to Carlisle, Vera and Steven worked with advanced Russian students Caitlin Moriarty, Alex North, and Maria Smirnova on the translation of a new cycle of Vera's poetry. The workshop was part of the students' senior seminar, "Workshop in Translation," led by Prof. Alyssa DeBlasio. During the session with Vera and Steven, students discussed and worked through many of the difficulties of translating poems from Russian into English. Later this week, Vera will read a selection of her poetry to the Dickinson community at a public reading in the Biblio Café and the students, Caitlin, Alex, and Maria, will read their English translations in accompaniment.  

For Maria Smirnova, a student from the Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow), it was her first time translating from her native Russian into English. "Before the workshop I was very afraid and thought I would never be able to do it. Now I have changed my mind, as I understood that the most important fact for the translator of poetry is to make the translated poems sound natural, sound like they were originally written in English. It was a great experience." 

For more information on Vera and Steven's first visit to Dickinson in 2004, see:

http://www.dickinson.edu/academics/programs/russian/content/Vera-Pavlova/

Edwards taking lava temperatures at Tolbachik

Since November 2012, the Plossky Tolbachik volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula has been erupting. But almost all the scientific information about the eruption is in Russian, leaving non-Russian speaking volcanologists and seismologists in the dark about recent developments in Russia’s far east. Professor Ben Edwards of Dickinson's Earth Sciences Department took a trip to the eruption site in January 2013, where he measured temperatures at the lava flow and studied the lava-snow interaction. After his return, three advanced Russian language students joined the project by translating updates about the eruption from Russian into English. Their translations were completed as part of their senior seminar, “Workshop in Translation,” where they have been trying their hands at translation of texts in a variety of styles, from poetry to journalism.

The students’ translations can be found on the official website of the Kliuchi Vulcanology Observatory: 

http://www.volkstat.ru/news.php  

Next week, the students in the seminar will be working with renowned Russian poet Vera Pavlova and her translator, Steven Seymour, for a special workshop on challenges in translating poetry from Russia to English.

Alex North (L), Maria Smirnova (C) and Caitlin Moriarty (R)