Graphic Means documentary on pre-computer-age desktop publishing and design has for the first time been released in Seattle this April. But it drew the attention of a SUSU Professor Pavel Pisklakov a year before at a preview in Warsaw. Already back then he was eager to make this film available for Russian audience. Though, Pavel did not have any significant experience in translation before beginning his work on Graphic Means.
I translated the film Helvetica and a few videos for students, but those were not official translations, says Pavel.
He contacted the director, a designer from London, and offered his service on Russian adaptation of the documentary. The translation was labour-intensive: 85 minutes of the film and over 1,500 words of specific text full of professional terminology. However, the translators know the designed terminology firsthand. Pavel is a member of the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen. Today, he teaches the SUSU students at the Department of Service and Technology of Material Artistic Processing. And for the second participant of the project, Rifat Abdrashitov, manual desktop publishing is closely related to his early career in journalism.
I started as a journalist in 1991, and back then desktop publishing was performed manually with the help of photographic films and perforated paper tapes. In a way, namely because of the pre-computer desktop publishing I fell in love with journalism, recalls the project co-author Rifat Abdrashitov.
Despite the fact that as professionals they understood the subject well, they still had to use dictionaries. Then again, they were mostly driven by their love of the Russian language. Thus, complex notions became vivid and easily understandable for all. So presently, Chelyabinsk has joined the long list of the cities around the world (over 60 cities in total) where this film premiered. The documentary premiered at the Debarkader Modern Art Festival. For now, Chelyabinsk is the only Russian city where the film was released, but shortly after it was shown it attracted attention of Yekaterinburg.
So, on September 30th and October 1st Graphic Means will run at the Cinema Theatre named after A.S. Pushkin with the already amended subtitles.