What is the translator Leonid Volodarsky known for?

August 8, 2023 at the age of 73 died translator and radio presenter Leonid Volodarsky. Details of his biography – in the material “Kommersant”.

Volodarsky Leonid Veniaminovich was born on May 20, 1950 in Moscow. Graduated from the Maurice Thorez Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages. He spoke English, French, Spanish and Italian. He worked at the Institute for African Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, then at the Institute of the International Labor Movement of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In 1968 he began translating foreign films into Russian and worked at film festivals. Known as a simultaneous translator of many films that appeared on Soviet and Russian screens, as well as on VHS cassettes in the 1980s and early 1990s. The peculiarity of Volodarsky’s work, in his own words, was that he translated films simultaneously and from the first time. He gained fame due to his manner of speech and specific pronunciation. Over 30 years, Volodarsky translated more than 5 thousand paintings.

Since the late 1990s, he has collaborated with the NTV and NTV+ television companies as a translator of dialogue texts in foreign television series and films (Miami Police: Vice Department, Love and Secrets of Sunset Beach, The Sopranos, Bondiana, etc.) . In 2007, at the invitation of Anna Dmitrieva, together with Vladimir Gomelsky, he commented on retrospective broadcasts of NBA games on NTV-Plus.

He worked a lot on the radio. From 2009 to 2010, at the Russian News Service radio station, he hosted the program “From 3 to 7 with Volodarsky” on weekends. In 2011, he hosted the program “Show with Leonid Volodarsky” on radio “Mayak”. Since March 2014, he has hosted an author’s program on the radio “Moscow Speaks”, where the history of Russia in the Soviet period was studied. He acted in commercials and voiced some commercials.

Author of translations of English and American fiction. He was one of the first to translate the works of Stephen King into Russian. Interested in the history of intelligence. He acted as the scriptwriter and host of the ten-episode television movie “Intelligence, which few knew about.” Author of the political detective “Snow from Central America” ​​about the activities of the CIA in Central America.