Below are my answers to questions that translators are often asked:

Q.: What fields do you specialise in?
A.: I think it is not quite correct to say "specialise". I would say that in some areas I have a more extensive experience than in others. Those include banking, information technologies and telecommunications, marketing/advertising/PR, finance, oil and gas production, energy industry, legal documents, legislation, international cooperation, HIV/AIDS, social issues... However, I worked with wine makers, with fairy tale writers, with doctors, with railway professionals, etc.

Q.: Do you use translation software?
A.: If you mean automated translation, the answer is point-blank "no". Not even because it is unethical; editing of such "translations" can take much longer than doing a translation from scratch. At the same time, I do use computer-aided translation tools" (OmegaT and Anaphraseus - free analogues to the famous Trados).

Q.: What file formats can you work with?
A.: Practically any format.

Q.: Do you preserve the formatting of the original document?
A.: Yes.

Q.: Why does the standard page contain 1,800 characters?
A.: As far as I know, that system survived from the typewriter times - on average, a page contained 30 lines of 60 characters each.

Q.: In the West, calculation is typically based on the number of word, how does that correlate with the "standard page"?
A.: A standard page contains some 300 to 350 English words, i.e. 3 pages are roughly equal to one thousand words. Frankly speaking, calculation of characters seems more appropriate to me. For example, words in the English language are short, and they are long in Finnish...

Q.: Can you do a translation "by yesterday"?
A.: I try to avoid that. First, haste always impedes quality. Second, there is always a risk to exceed the allotted time, and guess who will be to blame, after all?

Q.: Which of your works can you mention?
A.: for example:

• interpretation for the US Department of Agriculture Trade Mission in Ukraine (August 1992)
• interpretation for the Ukrainian parliamentarian delegation to the UK (October 1996)
• translation of financial documents of Ukrainian Railways into English,
• translation of Ukrainian Railways financial model from English into Ukrainian, within the EBRD Project of Ukrainian Railways Restructuring and Commercialisation (1997/98).
• translation of promo materials for www.nemiroff.ua into English (2005 through 2007);
• translation of internal documents, news releases and the company magazine of British-American Tobacco – Ukraine (2005 through 2007, from English into Ukrainian and Russian).

I can assure you that I approach all my assignments with the same responsibility, regardless of the client and the size of work.