My own, somewhat unexpected, entry into theatre translation came in 1977 as literal translator of The Cherry Orchard for Trevor Griffiths's version at Nottingham Playhouse. It was something I fell into quite by accident. At the time, I was working intermittently as an actress, having studied Russian at Leeds University. A call to an audition at Granada Television for a TV series Bill Brand, written by Griffiths, had led to a meeting with him and a conversation about my passion for things Russian. I got a small part in the series but, more important, weeks later, Trevor Griffiths, who lived half a mile away from me in Leeds, rang me up and asked if I'd be interested in doing a literal translation of The Cherry Orchard for him. It proved to be the first of twelve translations of Russian plays that I have worked on, including revisits to both The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters, albeit many years apart.

Having worked closely with the director, when I was asked to translate the play again for a National Theatre production, in a version by David Lan, in 2000, my first thought was that there was little more linguistically that I could usefully add. On reflection, it occurred to me that maybe the accumulated wisdom of another 15 years' acquaintance with Russian might make a difference. And I was right, for, as soon as I started working on the text, I was surprised at how many new things I found, particularly when prompted by the analytical minds and detailed questioning of David Lan and director Katie Mitchell. Mitchell, of all the playwrights and directors I have worked with, has an extraordinary, some might say worrying – I'd say noble – concern with textual analysis and getting at the truth. It takes even the most jaded translator of what seems an over-familiar text down new and untrodden paths.

People often talk about the concept of the 'actor's director'; Katie Mitchell is probably the translator's director par excellence. She places an enormous trust – as well as huge expectation – in the role that the literal translator can play in the creation of a new version of a Chekhov text. In my own work with her on three Chekhov plays, she has been generous in according me much more than the title of 'literal translator', a somewhat belittling tag that many translators who do the work reject. If only the theatre managements would stop insisting on using it!

Whenever I have worked with Katie Mitchell, she has always credited me as dramaturg cum Russian consultant and draws exhaustively on my specialist knowledge of things Russian, not just during the preparation of the text but also throughout rehearsals. Some directors and even playwrights can, in my experience, have a somewhat cavalier attitude to the literal translation. For them, the translator's role ends as soon as the text is delivered, often with virtually no questions or feedback being sent to the translator thereafter. In so doing, they can be completely blind if not insensitive to the useful role that the translator can play, not just during the ensuing translation/adaptation process, but also beyond that, in discussion with the actors.

A few directors, such as Mitchell, have grasped the crucial role that the translator can play as the all-essential conduit between the original language text and the actors who perform it. My first experience of working with her in 1998 on Uncle Vanya opened up a whole new world of what one might call 'forensic' translation. We spent many happy but intense hours together, and later with David Lan, on a detailed analysis of the text and what we came to call its crucial 'buzz words'. Katie Mitchell's many questions prompted me to draw up copious contextual notes, not just on the language, but also on the historical, literary and social background to the play – notes that she, David and the actors found invaluable in rehearsal and which, to my own gratification, prompted discussion that afforded all of us moments of profound insight. More important, from a linguistic point of view, a more in-depth analysis of the nuances of meaning of Russian words, idioms and phrases led in many cases to the preservation in the final version of the original literal meaning of the text.

Trevor Griffiths had astutely picked up on this back in 1977 when, to cite a very simple example, rather than go for the until-then-accepted translation of the endearing Russian word ogurchik ('my little cucumber') as 'my little peach' – on the grounds that English audiences would find this peculiar – he opted to preserve the original. More recently, a critic reviewing Mitchell's production of Uncle Vanya commented on David Lan's rendering of Constance Garnett's original translation of '25 wasted years' of the Russian 'dvadtsat' pyat' let perelivaet is pustogo v porozhnee' as '25 years pouring water from one empty bucket into another' as being inspirational. But in fact, the metaphor was Chekhov's ('25 years pouring from one empty thing into an emptier one'), and the playwright's final version of this was directly facilitated by the literal translation.