As part of the efforts made to ensure the proper delivery of information produced by the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) in all six official languages of the United Nations, UNAI has been working over the past few months with a number of online volunteer translators recruited through the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Online Volunteering service, who have made a valuable contribution to broadening the multilingualism of United Nations public information by making the UNAI website more accessible to Arabic, Chinese, French and Russian speakers. This article was written by one of the translators helping with the UNAI website in Russian.
My name is Olga Tsuprykova
My role as a volunteer working with the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), is to assist with the English-Russian translation of UNAI news.
I was born in a small village in the heart of Ukraine, grew up in its eastern part, Donetsk region, and graduated from the National Economic University in its capital, Kyiv. The whole country is my home, and as a 'green tourism' fan, I traveled a lot within my native land and that inspired me to get to know more about other cultures, see the world and spread the word about my beautiful homeland, as well as study different languages.
As of today, I speak Ukrainian, Russian, English, Greek and Italian, and I am truly glad that my passion for linguistics and translation can be used to help others. Two years ago I worked at a diplomatic mission in Ukraine assisting with the development cooperation projects in the spheres of public health, sustainable agriculture, inclusive education and gender equality.
Since I would like to continue my professional path in the field of international civil service, besides being a Master's student of International and European Studies and an intern at the International Center for Black Sea Studies, nowadays I also actively participate in various volunteer projects devoted to the intercultural dialogue facilitation.
In my postgraduate studies I specialize in International Public Administration, which is the reason why the United Nations has always been in the sphere of my academic interest and as such, I have tried to have a good understanding of its founding principles and current agenda. In that sense, UNAI seems like a prominent and dynamic initiative of the Organization as a whole.
As UNAI has created such a diverse network of leading universities from all over the world, being a volunteer of this initiative and translating news to Russian, allows me not only to get a new experience, but also to learn while making it possible for more and more people to discover innovative solutions offered by the various academic institutions on their way to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Moreover, every story once it is translated in all official languages of the UN and published on the website, becomes an encouragement and an example to follow for academia and research centers around the globe, and from my point of view, it makes this volunteer opportunity a real chance of making a difference while contributing to the creation of the positive synergy between individuals, researchers and practitioners.