Issue 31 - December 2006

From all of us at Next Page

We wish you all the best things of life during this festive season – happy times in the company of friends, a home filled with joy and the immeasurable pleasure of curling up with a good book.

Translatorium: Seminar for Translators from Eastern Europe

Between 2 and 11 November 2006 the Translatorium, an annual seminar with long history, beginning from the East-Central European School in the Humanities in Warsaw, took place in the small Polish village of Krzyzowa, hosted by the Krzyżowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe in cooperation with the Polish Book Institute.

The Translatorium gathers together people involved in the various stages of the process of production, translation and publication of literature – authors, translators, publishers, editors, etc. During this year’s Translatorium there were workshops in five workgroups and five languagues (Polish, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Russian and German), dedicated to literature and translating. Meetings were organized with publishers from the region – Czarne, Znak, WAB and Nemrod from Poland, Fluid from Russia, Folio from Ukraine. Maria Velichkova from Next Page Foundation presented what is happening on the previous, current and following pages of the organization’s programs, which provoked considerable interest among the participants.

The organizers’ plan is also to publish texts, translated as a result of this seminar in literature periodicals engaged in the seminar: Chetwer (Ukraine), Inostrannaja literatura (Russia), Tworczosc (Poland). They envisage broadening the initiative in terms of participants’ profile and working languages and are open to new ideas and cooperation.

New books published

Hienadz Sahanovic, Zachar Sybieka, The History of Belorussia, translation into Czech by Adam Havlin (Lidove Noviny publishing house, Prague 2006), supported by the East Translates East publication program

The translation claims to be the first Czech publication on comprehensive Belorussian history, combining in one edition the works of two historians. The book opens with the settling of the Slavonic tribes in the territory of modern day Belorussia during the 4th century AD, and follows the history up to the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium, when Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime was established. The edition is enriched with a special chapter on Czech-Belorussian historical relations, written by Michal Plavec, and a chapter on the Post-Soviet history of the sovereign state by Raman Janouski. The book appears in a beautiful design and high publishing quality, with plenty of visual materials.

Diego Valades, Control on Power, translation into Russian by Alexey Avtonomov, Victoria Gaidamaka (Idea Press publishers, Moscow 2006), supported by the Translating Current Debates publication program

This book by the distinguished Mexican constitutionalist scholar Diego Valades deals with the question of control of power in Mexico, the state with the longest history of democracy in Latin America. At the same time, Valades’s analysis and conclusions are based on a comparative law study, which interprets the data from the constitutional legislation of the US, Spain, Russia, Great Britain, etc.

The publishers have prepared the book’s design in close cooperation with the author. Diego Valades has been invited to present his book at a seminar at the Institute of Law and State of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the spring of 2007.