What it was like to translate The Americans' Russian scenes

The New Yorker

Acclaimed Russian-American journalist and author Masha Gessen explains in a New Yorker essay that "my life prepared me to do one job, and this job was translating for The Americans" for the past three seasons. "It wasn’t just any Russian, either," she explains. "The show begins in 1981 and ends in 1987, just before the language began to follow, and to facilitate, the country’s transformation by absorbing hundreds of words from foreign languages—office, bucks, management, and so many others that capitalism brought with it, but also electoral’niy, exit poll, and more to describe the mechanics of democracy—and by creating brand-new slang.