TALK: The Russian Word's Mouth, Pushkin House, Apr 17

Tue 17 April 2012 – 7.30pm
Michelle Berdy talks about her book "The Russian Word’s Worth" 
Michelle Berdy 
PUSHKIN CLUB PROGRAMME
Language: In English


Since 2002, readers all over the world have been enjoying and learning from Michele A. Berdy’s column, The Word’s Worth in The Moscow Times. A quirky, opinionated, sometimes hilarious and yet always thoughtful and authoritative guide, Berdy looks at Russia’s changing culture, politics, and daily life through language and the art of translation.


In the over 200 columns gathered in this volume, she explores the language of popular and youth culture, politics, the workplace, culture high and low, and the comical struggle of expats trying to feel at home in a foreign language and culture. She tackles subjects not found in any Russian textbook or cultural guide, from the serious (expressing condolences and mastering church etiquette) through the annoying (dealing with the plumber and writing the perfect robbery report), to the essential (excusing oneself, politely and not, to use the rest room). Her columns clarify Russian grammar, provide translations of devilishly difficult words and phrases, and throw open a window on Russia in the 21st century.


“The Russian Word’s Worth is essential reading for students and teachers of Russian, translators, Russia-watchers, and anyone who wants to understand Russia today.”


“For those of us in the States dealing with contemporary Russian—newspapers, magazines, novels, movies—Michele Berdy’s columns are so good, they’ve become addictive, providing in-depth insight into what’s new, what’s different, and what’s stayed the same in today’s language. Russian is changing at lightning speed, and her insider knowledge of how Russians actually speak is second to no one’s. If I can’t be on the streets of Moscow or Petersburg myself, at least I have Michele Berdy to be my eyes and ears.” — Marian Schwartz


“Michele Berdy is to the Russian language what Julia Child was to French cooking: the same juicy, humorous approach, the same demystification of a daunting subject, the same message that ‘if I can do this, so can you’.” Joanne Turnbull


“Michele has a truly unique gift for articulating the difficulties that
Russians and English-speakers encounter while trying to understand each other’s worlds. Her work is as entertaining as it is profound, and it will prove equally useful to beginning students and to advanced professionals.” – Robert Chandler


Michelle Berdy has been living in Moscow since 1978, working as a translator in various contexts, guide, consultant and trip organizer, television producer, writer, editor, administrator in non-profit organizations, and health communications specialist. Currently she runs a column in The Moscow Times called “The Word’s Worth”.


Tickets: £7, conc. £5 (Friends of Pushkin House, students and OAPs)
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/michelle-berdy-talks-about-her-book-the-russian-words-worth

TONIGHT: Inside Russia: A Correspondent's Personal Notes at Pushkin House, London

Thu 12 April 2012 – 7.00pm
Talk
Inside Russia: A Correspondent’s Personal Notes 
by Bridget Kendall 
GB RUSSIA SOCIETY PROGRAMME


The BBC’s Bridget Kendall is probably best known for her reporting from Moscow at the end of the perestroika era, when as BBC Moscow correspondent as she charted the Soviet Union’s collapse, the failed coup of 1991 and the emergence of a new Russia under Boris Yeltsin.


In fact her acquaintance with the country goes back to the mid 1970s when she studied for a year in a provincial university in what was still the height of the Brezhnev era. Thirty years on, her
experience of ordinary life in a stagnating and strictly controlled Soviet Union is a useful reminder of just what living in Soviet Union meant on a day to day basis.


At that time, many experts still considered the Soviet system might remain entrenched for decades to come. But in fact, when she returned for a second year of study in the early 80s, she was witness to a rather different mood: the Soviet Communist empire was beginning to crumble, under the strain of a failing economic system that could no longer compete with its cold-war rival, compounded by an unpopular war in Afghanistan and the incompetence of an aging and ailing leadership.


In this talk Bridget will share her personal reminiscences from the Soviet era, chart her experiences of reporting on Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms and the extraordinary collapse which twenty
years ago led to the end of the USSR, and offer some thoughts on the turbulent path Russia has travelled since then.


TO BOOK FOR THIS TALK PLEASE EMAIL membership@gbrussia.org
Tickets: £5
http://www.pushkinhouse.org/en/events/inside-russia-a-correspondents-personal-notes