Will oil and gas translators get back to work or vanish at all?
Vlad Belousov, member of the Union of translators of Russia, author of text-books and training courses for oil and gas translators and interpreters.
As a result of sanctions against Russia on the side of western countries, all international oil and gas companies left our market. Translators who worked in the oil and gas industry lost their jobs. What is going to happen further, and is there future for oil and gas translation? Let us try to figure it out. But first of all let’s talk about future of the very oil and gas industry in Russia.
During my rather long career in the oil and gas industry as a translator and interpreter (and namely over 30 years) I repeatedly heard different concerns about the future of the oil and gas industry, one thing or another: nobody needs oil and its cost abruptly drops, oil reserves in the world will finish in 10 years, or alternative energy sources make oil not needed in the world.
Will the oil reserves be depleted in the nearest future? Actually in many cases it is just speculation. The USA recalculates its reserves, and all of a sudden there is much more oil in the world. They discovered a new field and there is even more oil. And when we start thinking about potential reserves of oil and gas in the Arctic, we begin to understand that there are sufficient volumes of hydrocarbons for several generations.
Some people live in illusion that it is possible to refuse from oil. However it is not possible, because every day of our life we use oil-based products and moreover – they are even present in our food.
Oil is not only a source of energy, but also raw material for fabrication of many products. Oil and oil chemistry products are used to fabricate synthetic fabrics, such as strong nylon, soft like wool acryl, polyester that does not crinkle and is airproof. These fabrics are used to make different clothes, stockings, tights and so on.
Oil is needed for fabrication of plastics, rubber, solvents, detergents, fertilizers, medication, cosmetics and food products. Oil products include fuels and lubricants – gasoline, kerosene, diesel, aviation and jet fuels, black oil, special lubes, brake fluids and others.
In many cases modern clothes is fabricated of oil-based fabric. Nowadays nobody is surprised to see a sweater made of polyester or stockings made of nylon, and by the way, both materials are products of oil refining.
And even this is not the most amazing. Modern technologies allow to use oil for production of protein easily turned into “meat products”, identical to organic meat by color and odor, for example, sausages. Here is one interesting fact: any computer “contains” about ten liters of oil. Even mobile phones, without which a contemporary man cannot imagine his life, by 40% consist of oil chemistry products.
This list of products can be very long. Now let us talk about future of oil and gas translation. Of course, it is not possible to challenge the fact, that when international oil and gas giants left Russia, the scope of work for oil and gas translators not only reduced, it just disappeared, maybe excluding those few translators who found jobs due to their relatives and acquaintances.
And professional oil and gas translators with big experience found jobs in different industries, retired, or even left Russia. Yes, so far they still can be identified, they are available, but less and less.
As long as there is no demand in the market, and namely in the oil and gas industry, the new generation of translators does not strive to study the basics of the oil and gas industry and relevant terminology, instead young translators follow the market in areas where translation jobs still remain. Many oil and gas translation schools closed due to lack of interest in them.
What will be further, for example, in several years? What forecast could be suggested? Concerning oil and gas industry, there is no doubt that it will make a new grade, as it happened several times before, during my work in the industry. There is another inevitable thing – foreign investments. No matter how long Russian oil and gas monopolies resist that, because technical progress, exploration of new fields and obvious necessity to develop reserves of hard-to-access oil and also gas, as an important energy source for today, will require significant financial investments, which can be found only at international level.
Among the main investors, that may come to replace the former ones, there are primarily India, China, Iran, and also other countries even including European Union. For example, only several Chinese companies were present at Moscow Oil and Gas Exhibition in 2022, but in 2023 there were over 300 of them. Part of their representatives could speak Russian, another part – English, but all the rest – only Chinese. They could not answer my question, how they are going to make business in Russia in terms of language communication, and just shrugged their shoulders.
How can all that affect the translation industry? There is one important thing to know. At all international oil and gas projects, like French, German, Dutch or other companies where I happened to work, English always was the official communication language. I believe that such trend will also remain for further projects. But concerning competent oil and gas translators, due to the above-mentioned reasons, they will just vanish. Even today some practicing translators answer the question “what is oil in subsurface contained in?” like “in rivers”, “in lakes”. “in wells”.
In other words, actually we can return to the situation of early 1990-s, when oil and gas translation was at initial stage of its development. That means origination of demographic pitfall in relation to oil and gas translators. Then we cannot exclude import of qualified translators from adjacent countries, where oil and gas translation is actively practiced, for example, from Kazakhstan, similarly to the situation in the end of 1990-s when many Russian translators worked on rotation in Kazakhstan, also due to lack of competences there. Time will show, how appropriate such forecasts can be.
