What's In A Name? How Russian Benefits Other Studies

Привет! Unlike many of the blog's contributor's, I am not a Russian major at UH. I'm actually a graduate student pursuing a Russian Certificate, which I hope to complete next spring! While I wish I'd majored in Russian, I wanted to share how I've integrated my Russian studies into my other academic projects.

I graduated in May from the law school, and will be studying for the Bar Exam all summer. The Bar Exam is the test all lawyers must take to be licensed to practice law in their state. It's a two-day exam with 200 multiple choice questions and an entire day of essays. It's nerve wracking to think about how much information I need to keep in my brain, but hopefully the hard work will pay off!

My focus in law school was space law -- which, yes, is a real thing! A lot of space law is international law, and given the Cold War origins of our space policy, having a background in Russian has been incredibly valuable.

In addition to my law degree, I will be finishing up a masters in history. My thesis project also focuses on the Space Race and US space policy. I've found that having a background in

Russian language and history has helped me so much with this project. I've really enjoyed looking at documents in Russian and sloooowwllyyyy sounding them out. Sometimes, the translation into English will use a different word than I would have used, so it's interesting to see how much translation can impact what a document says.

For example, the Soviet Space Station Mir (Мир) is often translated to mean “peace” however Mир can also mean “world” or "village/commune". What's valuable in knowing what words mean goes far deeper than the word itself. While it obviously wouldn't have been a great idea to name it "Space Station War," the choice of "peace" in itself tells us that the naming of the Space Station was important. In 1986, when Mир was launched, the world was still very much entrenched in the Cold War, so the choice of a "peaceful" name is telling. And while "peace" is the government-issued translation, thinking about it in terms of "world" offers a different look at the meaning of the name. As a Space Station orbiting above the Earth, Mир was a world in itself--one that was looking down on our world. I can't pretend to know the whole significance of this naming, but I never would have known to think about it at all had I not studied the Russian language. Personally, I love little nuggets of information that make you think about something in a new way!

As I work on my thesis this year and hopefully continue on in a career in space law, I'm excited to discover all the ways studying Russian broadens my learning.

до свиданя!

-Лара