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Translations
Back in 2008, I was approached by Siniša Boljanović, the man who later started Global Voices Serbian, with the request to assist him in improving his English. Of course, I accepted that because I had some experience in that work and this one was even more challenging because, as you might know, Sinša is blind and I was to use some more productive and more interesting ways of teaching, adapted to him.
So we started and we “saw” each other almost every day and Siniša was really a great success in my teaching career, if I may say so. Few months later, he revealed his real intentions of improving his English and that's when he mentioned the Global Voices and his idea to start it in Serbian and he invited me to join him. I accepted of course because I didn't have a steady job i.e., I retired from active service due to a car accident I suffered this day back in 1998 while returning from a business trip, after which I spent 5 days in coma and when I woke up I was speaking French and later English (the languages I studied at the university), and much later Serbian, my mother tongue.
I was just translating in the beginning and Siniša was doing the editorial work along with translation, but later I also started doing the editorial work. I've started translating for Global Voices because I liked the context of stories I see on this website, the stories we need to hear about.
3 comments
This is an incredible story Dijana – the mind is such a mysterious thing – your experience of primary language shift must have been frightening – or was it something else?
Well Ivan, you know the human brain works is so mysterious ways. My body and head were severely bumped but I didn’t break anything, and another consequence was that I’ve forgotten a lot but still remember some things. My sister was with me after the accident and she persuaded me, in English, to speak Serbian. One of the doctors said it was one of the reactions after the brain suffers such a shock.
Dijana, I’ve also had an experience which may be called slightly similar to yours. I fainted, and, just after regaining consciousness, I had this irrepressible urge to speak German (my 2nd foreign language), and it was more difficult for me to speak in Russian, my mother tongue, than in German (though only for a short while). Possibly this is some specific reaction of the brain.
Happy holidays!