Lynn Visson, the author, has a formidable CV, including a PhD in Slavic languages, working with the US State Department and vast experience interpreting for the United Nations. She is also the author of an eclectic range of books, including Russian and Uzbek cookbooks. But all of that aside, what marks her out here is her obviously profound understanding of the difficulties and practicalities of interpreting from Russian.
The bulk of the book is divided up by grammar categories (verbs, time expressions, negative constructions, conjunctions, prepositions and particles, numbers and names, syntax, style, etc.), which makes it easy enough to dip into to remedy a particular problem. Each chapter discusses the particular problems of a certain type of construction and provides examples from a wide range of journalistic and conference sources. Inevitably, some of what is said will be things you have heard before, and a lot of the solutions will be ones that you may find for yourself. But you would certainly be hard pushed to find such a compendium of language specific reflection anywhere else. And what struck me while reading was the amount of times Visson pinpointed a problem that I had encountered in the past but been unable to solve satisfactorily. For each problem, the book suggests a number of ways it could be overcome, and does so in a way that makes it seem like the most obvious thing in the world. As a result the lessons are easy to learn, and I have frequently found myself recalling, while interpreting, that I am using a solution taken from this book! This not only provides great satisfaction, but also bears witness to the eminently practical nature of the book, and its effectiveness as an aid to learning. More.

See: In one ear

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