30 September 2014 International Translation Day

International Translation Day is celebrated on 30 September all over the world. On their day, we wish all translators the right solutions to semantic dilemmas and a lot of meanings saved in translation. We also take the opportunity to announce the Translator’s Selection series at this year’s Conrad Festival, which will show us how shared worlds come to life in literature. Because the Conrad Festival offers more than the visits of the most renowned writers of our times, such as Cabre and Auster. From 20 to 26 October in Krakow, it will also be possible to meet the authors of Polish translations of the world’s most famous works of literature.

You have never heard of Alice in Wonderland. Never in your life have you read any novel set in Barcelona. Rilke does not exist for you, and Umberto Eco was mentioned only on your trip to Italy. This is how the world would look without translators. If it were not for translation experts, we would be living in separate worlds. Common European and world cultures would probably never be formed.

The 6th edition of the Conrad Festival, taking place this year, is entitled Shared Worlds. Every day from 20 to 26 October in the early afternoon, the Festival organisers invite you to take part in meetings with the translators of world literature masterpieces into Polish. The Translator’s Selection series is an opportunity to discuss and answer three extremely important questions: what texts should be translated into Polish today; what works and which authors should be recalled and refreshed so as to recover the languages that have become quite archaic and hardly legible; and finally – how to build the canon of world literature? We will turn the spotlight on the prominent figures who normally stay in the shadow of great writers. After meeting them, you will go and search through foreign authors’ books to find their names in most contents of your bookshelves. They include Carlos Marrodan Casas, Adam Pomorski and Jolanta Kozak.