Michael Frayn

Well, in fact, our Russian never got good enough to be passed as...

He was on the same course, yes, yes, yes.

And we were friends.

We weren't really being trained for espionage.

It was the time of the Berlin Airlift.

And it seems as if there might be a war with Russia.

People realized that the only people who spoke Russian in the country were ex-Russian nationals.

And there's always, of course, a question mark over their loyalty, as seen by the authorities.

Yes.

So they hastily began these schemes to teach linguists in order to interrogate prisoners, to listen to enemy broadcasts, read enemy propaganda, and so on.

And that's

What we were really being trained for was interrogating prisoners.

certainly to learning Russian and reading Chekhov.

But I started translating him because the National Theatre asked me to translate Goldoni.

And I said, I don't think I'll do it because I really scarcely know any Italian.

And the dramaturg at the National Theatre said, oh, good heavens, you don't need to know Italian to translate Gordone.

We just go out and buy some standard translations and you take them home and you lash them together into your own version.

So I was really eager to be produced at the National Theatre.

So I took a lot of Gordone translations home and read them.

But I couldn't feel what the original was like through these different versions.