​​Eyewitness Accounts News updates can be truly horrifying th | Word4Power

​​Eyewitness Accounts

News updates can be truly horrifying these days. Still, the more fortunate of us—those residing far from Ukraine and having no friends or relatives here—manage to shrug this off as some kind of propaganda, or just a bad dream, or whatever. 

Personal stories are one of the tools to breach this gap of indifference. In fact, much of our interpreters' and translators' work right now has to do with eyewitness accounts—making them accessible to the global audience. 

Most of the time we are translating the words of others; in my home city, I personally witnessed only one missile attack, and saw the consequences of another. But what if a top-notch interpreter had to experience the all-out turmoil firsthand, e.g. stay in Bucha throughout its occupation? What if they could write a chilling diary straight from the bomb shelter, typing it on a mobile phone thoughtfully hidden from the occupiers?

The fact is, there is such an interpreter, and here is his wartime diary on Medium (impressive text-to-speech available).

Still not sure if he is a real person? I've found a sweet old pic for you: the diary's author, joined by Word4Power and yours truly, sharing remote interpretation experience (before it went mainstream in 2020). Oh, how happy, how careless, and how euphoric our lives were!

Some more eyewitness accounts from people of all walks of life—1,900 and counting—can be found here. As a rule, they are not in English, but Google Translate, our tireless digital colleague, readily helps to get the message across. And if you happen to be from Ukraine, I hope you will find some of these memoirs inspiring, and decide to share your own story, too.