Foundation Publika

Support to Literary Translation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (part of initiative TransLab – the Literary Translation Laboratory)

In this series, we ask i-Portunus Houses participants to tell us their stories and experiences. At the end of each story, we invite you to reflect with us on important themes about mobility in the arts and civil society. 

The idea behind this mobility project was for the Foundation “Publika” from Sarajevo and the Association “Glosar” from Mostar to bring experienced translators from other countries and organize a series of events aimed at literary translators in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These events were meant to be part of the initiative called TransLab – Literary Translation Laboratory started in 2016 in the absence of proper formal education in the area of literary translation.

The main objective of the collaboration is the support to literary translation in Bosnia and Herzegovina through capacity building of literary translators via lectures and workshops led by authorities in this field. The project is very relevant as it fills the existing gap between formal education in the area of literary translation (virtually non-existent) and the situation in the labour market with scarce opportunity, unfair rates offered by publishers, and the lack of healthy competition in the sense of valorization of quality translations and critique of the not-sogood ones. The workshops and lectures implemented provided both theoretical considerations of issues specific to literary translations and practical training and/or on-the-job training while working on chosen texts with guidance from the moderators/international experts. This contributed to strengthened knowledge of the translators and, in turn, better quality of their future work i.e. translated works to be read by the general public. All events were attended by literary translators and philology students and were widely advertised, which also contributed to better visibility for literary translators.

In the early stages of development of the very concept of the mobility, two names immediately popped as the most obvious choices: the one of Ms. Françoise Wuilmart, the founder and director of the Centre Européen de traduction littéraire (CETL) from Brussels, Belgium, and the one of Mr. Vladimir Pavlović, one of the best translators in the region, who has a vast knowledge and teaches various techniques related to not only literary but also technical translation and conference interpreting. We cooperated with them in the past and were well aware of the abundance of knowledge and experience they both have. Having decided to use the opportunity to invite two more quality experts, we asked Ms. Wuilmart for a recommendation and she indicated Mr. Petruccioli and Mr. Girimonti Greco. The choice of experts/artist was a really good one as their expertise matched and they also turned out to be a good team. Not to mention that they are all really nice people who do not hesitate to share their knowledge and experience even beyond what was asked of them.

It is important to mention that, once the outline of the mobility was starting to become visible, the host organizations managed to get other partners on board, namely the Department for Romance Languages of the Faculty of Philosophy of Sarajevo, the French Institute in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Embassy of Italy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Having them on board confirmed the relevance and quality of the mobility and its events.

The programme started with the lecture and round table on the topic of „The Cultural Mission of a Literary Translator Today“. It was held in the French Institute in Sarajevo. The exchange of opinions and experiences from various countries and a vivid discussion were the right opening session for this week filled with different treats for the lovers of literature, languages and literary translation. The second event was again held in the French Institute in Sarajevo and it was in fact a literary translation workshop during which we worked on joint translation of excerpts from the book „La septième fonction du langage“ by Laurent Binet. The third day was marked by the lecture on the topic of „The Contemporary Italian Literature and Current Trends in the Publishing Industry“, held at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Sarajevo University. The lecture was, among others, attended by students and teaching staff of this faculty and of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Mostar University. The fourth event was again a literary translation workshop, during which was done joint analysis and comparison of three literary translations of an excerpt from the book „Effi Brest” by Théodor Fontane. It was held in the French Institute in Sarajevo. Another literary translation workshop was held on the fifth day, dealing with the translation of excerpts from the books „Repas de morts“ by Dimitri Bortnikov and „A la recherche du temps perdu“ by Marcel Proust. It was held at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. On the final day of this interesting week, a lecture was delivered on the topic of „Translation Without Theory?“, followed by another literary translation workshop treating translation of excerpts from the book „Une fête en larmes” by Jean D’Ormesson.

The events were a huge success and we are sure colleagues working in this industry will still be talking about it long after it was over. The feed-back was really positive and the only remark was that it was a pity that more such opportunities are not available. The visiting artists upon return sent their feed-back expressing positive opinions on the overall organization of the events and their wish to cooperate in similar projects in the future.

In a longer-term, we plan to establish a strong cooperation with Ms. Françoise Wuilmart and the European Centre for Literary Translation (CETL) from Brussels which she manages. By this cooperation we would like to create opportunities for regular exchange of knowledge, skills and know-how, for which we have an evident need in Bosnia and Herzegovina. CETL is a great resource for providing of this knowledge so we hope to be able to bring more experts with various areas of expertise and various languages to share their views and experience on different topics in the field of literary translation. The same goes for Mr. Pavlović, with whom we already collaborated in the past. Although we have not had previous experience with Mr. Petruccioli and Mr. Girimonti Greco, we were impressed by their expertise and would like to explore the possibility of further cooperation with them, since there is a considerable interest in the community for works by Italian authors and not many quality translators.

 

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