Autobiographical

A short introduction. My name is Basil. I am a professional translator from Russian into English. However, as artificial intelligence and the continuing war between Russia and Ukraine are having a deleterious impact on both revenue and emotions, I have decided to deploy the extra time available to start a blog about my parents, the time I spent in France, the former USSR and various Soviet republics, as well as different periods spent back in the UK,  the current climate and possible scenarios.  

The plan is then to move onto a review of economic and political developments in some parts of the former Soviet Union. Well, we all know about plans… I will also comment at some point on the state of the translation industry, including inherent risks and latent opportunities.  

However, my story starts long before I appeared on this earth. This article is dedicated to my father Kenneth (shortened to Ken here). Some of the dates may be revised in a later blog entry as it is proving extremely hard to clarify data from the official authorities.

An only child, Ken was born in November 1922 and raised in Bristol, studying at Clifton College. You have to remember that he came into this world only four years after the end of World War I when new technological developments, such as air travel, primarily available for the wealthy back then, and the rise of different forms of music such as jazz and cinema, have to be set against the deeply engrained poverty and high levels of unemployment of the time. This led to the General Strike of 1926 which lasted nine days where miners sought better pay and conditions, attracting the support of other industries. However, they were ultimately unsuccessful. 

The early 1930s were no better, following as they did the Great Depression in the United Kingdom from 1929-1932. It had been triggered by the international Great Depression, which is generally attributed in turn to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Fascism reared its ugly head under Oswald Mosley, but was ultimately defeated. 

At the same time, new products were appearing and BBC Radio was entertaining the masses with a mixture of drama, news, political and religious programmes, as well as music and broadcasts for children. It was good if you had a stable job.

Ken’s father did. He was a manager at Louis Bamberger and Sons, a firm of timber merchants. Ken’s mother didn’t work.  As you can imagine from the above, there was not much to do in the 1920s and 1930s if you weren’t into sport. And he wasn’t.  TV was relatively new, with the BBC only launching its ubiquitous service in 1936. Coverage was actually suspended throughout World War II. 

So other than cinema, which wasn’t cheap, or the radio, music and art, books and a vivid imagination came to the fore. My dad was a voracious reader and studied hard, so much so that he finished school at the age of 17. 

And then his future plans changed, as they did for too many people everywhere, with the coming of World War II. But that is another story…