In three sessions, between Monday, 29th October, and Thursday, 1st November 2018, four of the winners of the Young Nabokovs Award – Aliya Abdrafikova, Alex Chesnokova, Irina Kudryavtseva, Nikita Stychinsky, – underwent a transformative 3-part seminar on how to write and talk about Russia, in English.

The aim of the seminar was to coach talented young Russians into writing materials in English, which could be of interest to people around the world who want to find out more about the real Russia.

The final result of the seminar was to produce a 90 second video, in English, with English subtitles, for publication on YouTube.

Hosted by Angelique Antonova, Deputy Director of the St Petersburg School of Translation and Interpreting, and taught by Professor Viktor Kabakchi, and Will Hackett-Jones, a trainer at the St Petersburg School of Translation and Interpreting and CEO of Eclectic Translations, the seminar was a veritable master class in using Russian-culture oriented English.

The students learned about the process of taking an idea for a video to the synopsis stage, then on to script and storyboard stages; about the importance of message over medium; about speaking to camera, sound quality, lighting, video editing, voiceover, and finally subtitling. This was an immense amount of information to grasp over three short sessions, but they proved they were worthy of winning their Molodye Nabokovy (Aspiring Nabokovs) awards, but picking up the materials taught quickly, learning new skills, and doubtless working hard on their videos late into the night.

The results were beyond any of the instructors’ expectations, and we all hope that these videos are just the beginning of a positive flow of truthful information about Russia from a young generation of talented new writers, telling the rest of the world what it’s really like to live and learn in modern Russia.

Aliya Abdrafikova https://youtu.be/S31bXyaj19g

Irina Kudryavtseva https://youtu.be/xS3GkgLj7Qo

Nikita Stychinsky https://youtu.be/uKDkvF5JXsQ