Conversation with Michele Berdy (Moscow Times)

Join the Russian Flagship Program for a conversation with Michele Berdy, the Arts Editor for the Moscow Times and the author of the Russian Word’s Worth, a collection of her columns.

This is an online event via Zoom. Register here.

Michele A. Berdy has lived and worked in Moscow for more than 40 years. After graduating magna cum laude from Amherst College, she studied at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and then worked as a translator and editor at a Soviet publishing house (1979 to 1982). In addition to working as a simultaneous and consecutive interpreter, she has translated several books; hundreds of articles, short stories, and screenplays; and sub-titled over 50 feature and documentary films.  She has taught at the Department of Translation and Lexicography at Moscow State University and conducted master classes and workshops on various aspects of translation and intercultural communication in Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.

From 1986 to 1995, Ms. Berdy worked primarily in television documentary and public service production. As a field producer, she worked for Frontline, ABC/Washington Media Associates, Telesis Productions International. She also wrote screenplays for Prime Time Entertainment and worked as a translator/interpreter and production assistant for the Center for Visual History, Martin Smith Productions/WGBH, CNN, and the Children’s Television Workshop. In 1994 and 1995, she was co-producer on Russian national TV of two public service television programs and an innovative talk show hosted by Vladimir Pozner. She was Executive Producer of Internews in Moscow, during which she produced weekly and monthly news shows, public service announcements and oversaw production of documentaries by independent directors.

From television production Ms. Berdy segued into health and public service communications, designing, implementing and evaluating health and public interest communications programs in Russia, the CIS and Eastern Europe. An experienced trainer, she has designed and conducted a variety of trainings in advocacy, communications and social mobilization. She headed major health communication programs in Russia and Romania for the Center for Communications Program of Johns Hopkins University, and worked with groups such as WHO, the Foundation for the Development of Ukraine, Memorial, and Doctors of the World.

Since 2002 Ms. Berdy has been writing a weekly column on language and translation for The Moscow Times, and since 2015 she has been the newspaper’s Arts Editor. She has written scores of articles, book reviews, and features for the newspaper and published articles on politics and society for Foreign Policy, Politico, London Magazine and other periodicals in Russia and other countries. She was the lead or sole writer of four guidebooks about Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia, and wrote a weekly walking tour in Moscow for The Moscow Times.  She is co-author of a Russian-English dictionary. A collection of the first five years of columns, The Russian Word’s Worth, was published by Glas in 2010.