I came to Japan 32 years ago and worked in interpreting and translating the Russian language. Subsequently, I focused on teaching Russian, and I currently undertake research in effective learning methods. Through my past research, I firmly believe that pronunciation and listening are critical for learning Russian. In Russian, there are several sounds not found in Japanese, such as those formed by rolling the tongue, and I found that it is common for Japanese people to pronounce them wrongly.

During classes, I place emphasis on difficult pronunciations, focusing on teaching them from the initial stages to enable students to get close to native-level speaking. During pronunciation practice, students work in pairs to check each other’s pronunciation. Once they get the pronunciation and intonation correct, it is a matter of increasing one’s vocabulary. From there, they can further develop their language skills without boundaries.

This is the same with listening. From the start, I train students using the natural speed that native speakers use. Doing so trains their ears from an early stage, and they become capable of communicating. In the production of textbooks for Russian that I had worked on for many years, I paid particular attention to audio teaching materials. All textbooks have QR codes that offer access to audio clips in Russian that can be chosen in three levels: slow, medium, and natural speech.

Understand the differences between cultures to enhance learning Russian

Another research theme is comparing machine translation by artificial intelligence with translation undertaken by people. Machine translation is making rapid progress, but there are still many mistakes. For example, the Japanese phrase “sorry to disturb you late at night,” is an idiom that means “I hope I’m not bothering you.” However, when translated literally into Russian, becomes an incorrect suggestion that someone is visiting at a time when people are sleeping.

Another example is a comment by a taxi driver on the state of the traffic. The Japanese speaker says that “It is crowded,” meaning that traffic is bad. However, without a subject, machine translation renders this in Russian in a way that suggests that the crowding is people, leading to the misunderstanding that the roads are full of people.

In Russian, a subject is needed to convey information accurately; unlike Japanese—known for being ambiguous—Russian needs to be explicit.

The differences between Japanese and Russian culture also leads to mistakes in machine translations. For example, Osaka and Kyoto are cities in western Japan, but in Russia, instead of the west, they are seen as cities in the southern part of Japan.

It is also impolite in Russia to directly mention the toilet when needing to use the bathroom. People generally use a euphemism such as “I’m going to make a phone call” to excuse themselves. Existing machine translation technologies are unable to effectively translate these cultural nuances.

The process of learning a language will definitely be useful in life

Of course, machine translation also has its advantages. In particular, it is effective for people who have acquired a certain level of proficiency in Russian. When they use it to translate Russian into Japanese, they may notice new expressions that they have never thought of, and also expand their vocabulary. At the same time, it is difficult to discover mistakes in translations from Japanese to Russian, leading to major mistakes. It is important to use machine translation after fully understanding its pros and cons.

Not everyone who learns Russian goes on to work in jobs using Russian. However, the habit of learning a language will become a major advantage in life. Furthermore, once the foundation is in place, even if a person stops using Russian, they can quickly pick it up again.

Therefore, I hope people will keep learning Russian without giving up, even if they face difficulties. I believe that the day will definitely come when they can twirl Russian like a magic wand, easily transforming their language. With that aim, I hope to keep researching and providing even better methods of learning in the future.

The book I recommend

“ДВЕ ЛЯГУШКИ”(Two Frogs)
ЭКСМО（Eksmo）

Two frogs dropped into a pot of milk. One immediately gave up and drowned, but the other flapped around and mixed the milk to make butter and succeeded in using it as a platform to jump and escape. I hope students who just started learning Russian can become capable of reading many short, easy-to-read Russian folk tales in their original texts.

Interviewed: December 2023