George Watts

 George Watts is RT’s conference interpreter, narrator and translator. His voice is known as The Voice of RT.

You do not see him on the TV screen, but you do hear him as he does live simultaneous translations of Vladimir Putin at press conferences, Q&A sessions and public addresses.

Among other things, George also translated Dmitry Medvedev’s inaugural ceremony live in May 2008, as well as Victory Day Parades on Moscow’s Red Square.

Aside from big politics, George narrates feature films, sound-bites, promos and other features.

Born in Canada, George came to the Soviet Union in 1952 along with his parents and older brother Carl.

He graduated from the Moscow Foreign Languages Institute in 1959 and worked as a reporter, translator and announcer at Radio Moscow for 35 years. Now, he thoroughly enjoys his work with RT:

“The most exciting thing about RT is the great number of young people that I see working around me, in particular, their enthusiasm, their professionalism, their eagerness to acquire new skills, upgrade their command of the English language, their vim and vigor,” George says.

During his career, George did simultaneous translations of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, as well as other prominent statesmen.

And with such a long and fruitful career, George has, of course, seen the funny side of Russia:

“There was this crazy incident with me back in the 1970s,” George recalls.

“On the last day of April I was driving my family around in my car to show them Moscow getting ready to celebrate May Day. A traffic cop stops me. I give him my driving license, he looks at the place of birth and he says “Canada? Are you a spy?” To a stupid question, you get a stupid answer. I say, “Yes. I’m a spy.” He gives me back my license, saying, “Drive away, drive away.”

George’s favourite occupation is doing nothing, but he confesses that this rarely happens.

His preferred pastimes include reading books about histories of different countries, listening to classical music and spending time with his grandchildren – Vitali and Lisa – his pride and joy.