ONE FOR SEVEN THOUSAND
29.03.2012
March 8th – the International Women’s Day
ONE FOR SEVEN THOUSAND
Gulnara Zhumabekova is an interpreter. In Bogatyr Coal, LLP there is no one like her knowing the German language so well. She is one for the semi-thousand collective. Gulnara works with the specialists of the German firms delivering the mining machinery and equipment to the company.
Several tens of years ago, when the German rotary mining machinery started to be delivered to Severny and Bogatyr coal mines, there were no professional German translators and interpreters in Ekibastuz. At the beginning the school teachers were attracted for this work.
After the graduation from school Gulnara Zhumabekova went to Alma-Ata and entered the Institute of Foreign Languages. She did not know that in some years she would be hired to Ekibastuzugol Production Association as a German translator/interpreter.
At that time she already had some teaching experience, but she had some doubts, when she was offered a position of a translator. But she took the risk and does not regret about it.
During several years Zhumabekova worked with the specialists of TAKRAF company from the German Democratic Republic. And when at Vostochny coal mine there started the erection of the blending complex manufactured by Vezerhutte company from the Western Germany, she was sent there. And there she understood she did not have enough technical knowledge. She had to enter the technical secondary school, the specialty Mining Electric Mechanics. It was a good choice, because she could match the theoretical knowledge with practice.
In the middle of the eighties Gulnara went to the first foreign business trip to the German Democratic Republic. The delegation of Ekibastuz miners visited several enterprises and plants of the coal branch of the brother-country, had meetings with workers and specialists. She was shocked by what she saw there. There was the ideal order everywhere, the high labor organization and production culture. She was also surprised by the strong discipline and responsibility of workers. She wanted all of this to be used in our operations and tried to apply what she could at her work place.
The assembly of mining machinery is a long process, which presents many problems, which could not be sometimes resolved without her. She, being the bridge between this and that parties, tried to use her skills, knowledge, and communication experience with foreign specialists to the maximum extent to positively resolve arisen issues.
In addition to the existing experience, Gulnara had some more training – in Germany on Financial and Economic Activity of an Enterprise in Market Conditions. This helps her now in her work.
There was some more use of that study. In 1993 in Ekibastuz there opened the Kazakhstani and German Academy of Economics, Law and Engineering, where she worked as a teacher of the German language and a translator/interpreter for the German lecturers. Zhumabekova got the opportunity to not only expand her knowledge received at the economics courses in Germany, but also perfect her German language.
In 1996 the foreign investors came to Ekibastuz, when Bogatyr coal mines and other structural subdivisions of the former Ekibastuzugol Production Association were given for private ownership. At that time the town citizens heard the phase – Bogatyr Access Komyr – for the first time. Not all the employees of the former enterprise were hired to the new company. But, fortunately, Gulnara was. Her rich knowledge turned out to be in demand. Her position at the time was the assistant of the authorized representative of Access Industries, Inc. company.
In addition to her translator/interpreter’s duties, she had to prepare documents and get work permits for attraction of foreign specialists in Ministry of Labor and Social Protection, their registration, visa execution for company foreign partners in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and getting visas for company leaders and specialists going for business trips abroad.
Bogatyr Coal, LLP, which Gulnara is currently working for, carries out the modernization of rotary machinery put in operation almost thirty years ago. In the far eighties Gulnara took part in its assembly. Currently, like three decades ago, the German specialists work side by side with our specialists. Because they have one and the same goal. And the interpreter Gulnara Zhumabekova, like in the past, is the connecting link between them.
