TRANSLATORS

Language connects
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  • RAMAN ABRAMCHUK (POLAND)

    Raman Abramchuk was born in Minsk in 1981. He graduated from Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts: Bachelor degree in Librarianship, MA in culturology, finished a PhD program in theory and history of culture (all but thesis defense). Since 2010, Raman has been working as a professional guide-interpreter of the English, Polish, and French languages, studying Arabic for professional purposes, getting acquainted with Ukrainian through the regular reading of original works by Ukrainian writers.
    As an award of a writing contest of the Union of Belarusian Writers, in 2013, Raman was selected to study at the Young Writers School of the Union of Belarusian Writers and finished its Poetry Department. Raman translated works of Dmitry Strotsev, Nassim Soleimanpour, Andrei Moskvin, and Joe Cocker.
    As a Belarusian-speaking writer Raman has been publishing his essays, poems, travel notes in the main Belarusian media outlets. In 2021-2022, some of his literary works were selected for translation and publishing in anthologies dedicated to the protests and repressions in Belarus. Since 2021, Raman lives in Warsaw.

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  • ALESSANDRA BERTUCCELLI (ITALIA)

    Alessandra Bertuccelli (Viareggio, 1982) always likes to say that she is primarily a Slavic philologist, and then a translator and an Italian teacher. She owes her interest in Slavic languages to Belarus, which was the first Eastern European country she ever visited in the early 2000s. Alessandra enrolled in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the University of Pisa, studying Russian.
    Shortly after, Alessandra “discovered” the Bulgarian and Czech languages (and Serbian and Croatian, which she studied self-taught) that she attended voluntarily until the end of her studies. The Bulgarian language took her to Sofia. In 2013, she was invited to fill the role of a lecturer at Sofia University’s Master’s program in Translation. She has translated some of the leading contemporary Bulgarian poets and writers: K. Pavlov, E. Josifova, Z. Evtimova.
    Alessandra Bertuccelli translates from Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian and selects articles from the press of Eastern, Central and Balkan Europe for Internazionale and, recently, for Micromega, an independent left-wing Italian bimonthly magazine. She has translated essays by authors and artists such as V. Marcinovič, S. Lebedev, K. Miščenko, A. Sevyarynets, V. Lomasko.

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  • CHRISTINE BILORÉ (FRANCE)

    Christine Biloré was born in Cannes, France, in 1974. She graduated from the University of Nice in Applied Foreign Languages (English/Spanish) and from the University of Toulouse in Russian. She also owns a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Nice. She started a career as a freelance translator in 2004, focusing on legal and financial translation. Over the years, she received an opportunity to take part in various projects such as translating a book about the Holocaust in Latvia or working as a volunteer translator for NGOs such as WWf, Translators Without Borders, or Respond Crisis Translation. Passionate about foreign languages, she keeps on learning new ones such as Chinese and started to translate more books in 2019.

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  • ALINA BORZENKAITĖ (LITHUANIA)

    Alina Borzenkaitė was born in 1996 in Vilnius. She graduated from Vilnius University, has a BA degree in History and a MA in Cultural Heritage Conservation, works in the field of cultural heritage. Alina also writes poetry and translates texts from the Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian, and Russian languages. Her works are published in the collection of works by young poets "Literatūrinės slinktys 2021", cultural press, and almanacs.

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  • MIQUEL CABAL GUARRO (SPAIN)

    Miquel Cabal Guarro is a literary translator and lecturer at the University of Barcelona, a member of the Slavic Studies Seminar at Pompeu Fabra University.
    Miquel Cabal Guarro is also a member of the board of the Association of Catalan Language Writers (AELC), vice-president of the European Council of Associations of Literary Translators (CEATL), and has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Barcelona Culture Council.
    With a degree in Slavic Philology and a PhD in Linguistics, he has published more than forty translations into Catalan of narrative and theater works by authors such as Andrei Platonov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ludmila Petrushevskaya, Mikhail Lermontov, Sergei Dovlatov, Ivan Vyrypaev, and Marina Tsvetayeva. In the academic environment, he has taught and continues to teach in the field of linguistics, translation studies and Russian literature, and he is doing research in sociolinguistics of the post-Soviet space.
    Miquel Cabal Guarro received the Vidal Alcover Prize 2014 for the translation project of Petersburg, by Andrei Bely. He has been awarded the Barcelona City Prize 2021 for the translation of Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. He currently translates fiction and plays from a wide range of classic and contemporary authors.
    Photo by: Joana de Querol

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  • DIANA COROBER (ROMANIA)

    Diana Corober was born in the Republic of Moldova in 1988. She has a Bachelor and Master Degree in Finance and is a certified Romanian – Russian translator. Has worked mostly in the pharmaceutical industry, providing medical translations in three languages – Romanian, Russian, and English.
    Worked pro bono for projects like Khan Academy, translating various articles.
    Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, provided assistance and guidance for Ukrainian refugees, volunteering as a translator and facilitator.

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  • VYTAUTAS DEKŠNYS (LITHUANIA)

    Vytautas Dekšnys was born in Vilnius in 1972. He graduated from Vilnius University, MA studies in philosophy, and obtained a PhD from the Institute for Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
    Has translated more than 20 books and numerous minor publications from Polish, Ukrainian, and other Central-Eastern European languages. A member of the Lithuanian Writers' Union. Has worked as an international programs coordinator at the Lithuanian Writers’ Union, coordinated several translation workshops with Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian authors and translators.
    His poetry book “Iszimtys” (“Exceptions”) was awarded with the Young Yotvingian Prize at the international Druskininkai Poetry Autumn Festival in 2006.
    photo by Laura Vansevičienė

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  • JIM DINGLEY (UNITED KINGDOM)

    Jim Dingley was born in northern England in 1942. He has worked as a translator/interpreter in The Netherlands, and lectured in the Russian language and Literature, first at the University of Reading and subsequently at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College London.
    Jim Dingley has been involved with the study of Belarus and its language, history and culture since 1965. Now retired, he has been able to devote himself more fully to translation from Belarusian. The books he has so far translated include the illustrated histories of Belarus by Uładzimir Arłoŭ and essays by Tania Skarynkina. The most recent translation is of “Alindarka’s Children” by Alhierd Bacharevič; it was published by Scotland Street Press in Edinburgh in 2020, and republished earlier in 2022 by New Directions in New York.

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  • LUISA DOPLICHER (ITALIA)

    Luisa Doplicher started as a theoretical physicist, then switched to
    translation. She translates mostly science popularization essays from
    English and French to Italian, but occasionally works on mountain- or
    photography-related projects, following her other passions. She is
    moreover experienced in the translation of science books for children.
    Since February 2022, she started translating from Russian into Italian
    almost full-time and contributed to various projects aimed at providing
    the Italian public with an in-depth description of the situation in
    Ukraine and in Russia.

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  • ELENA DRĂGUȘIN-RICHARD (ROMANIA)

    Elena Drăgușin-Richard translates memoirs, evolutionary biology, philosophical works, personal development and theater in various languages: Romanian, Russian, and English. With a degree in Foreign Languages, she has worked as a teacher, translator, and editor, as well as in business development and sales in Romania, Russia, the United States, and Germany. She has a MA in Russian Linguistics from Bucharest State University. She is a member of ARTLIT (Romanian Literary Translators Association).

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  • VOLHA YERMALAYEVA FRANCO (BRAZIL)

    Volha was born in 1988 and grew up in Navapolatsk, Belarus. She graduated from the European Humanities University (Vilnius, Lithuania) in 2012 and currently is an MA student of Federal University of Bahia (Salvador, Brazil) where she studies architectural heritage.
    Currently living in Brazil, Volha teaches Belarusian, Portuguese, and Russian as foreign languages and works as a translator and interpreter. She is also a member of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and a representative of the People's Embassy of Belarus in Brazil.
    She translates Belarusian classic and contemporary poetry, especially about protests and civil rights, into Portuguese. Some of these translations were published in a special edition of São Paulo’s Memorial da Resistência, associated with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, in 2022.
    Since 2020, Volha organizes Belarusian poetry readings, workshops, and other cultural events in Brazil. She idealized the site “Poems from Prison” (a project of Free Postcards and the People's Embassy of Belarus in Brazil), with poetry and translations of literary works made by Belarusian political prisoners, launched in 2023.

Ángela Espinosa Ruiz
  • ÁNGELA ESPINOSA RUIZ (SPAIN)

    Ángela Espinosa Ruiz is a translator, poet, and researcher. She was born in Málaga and graduated the University of Granada; she has a master’s degree in Belarusian Philology from the University of Warsaw. She also has a music diploma (Professional Degree in Piano Interpretation).
    Nowadays, Angela is a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, teaching courses in the Belarusian language and literature, the Spanish language, and world literature.
    Ángela is an active participant of international conferences and congresses in the humanities and an honorary member of the Union of Belarusian Writers, having published four literary anthologies in the Belarusian language and a bilingual (Spanish-Belarusan) poetry anthology of selected works by Maksim Bahdanovič, as well as several translations and literary works in collective anthologies.
    She obtained a PhD in Literary Studies at the Complutense University in Madrid, having graduated summa cum laude after the defense of her dissertation, “Folklore-Inspired Symbolism in the Prose of J. Barščeŭski and G. A. Bécquer” on September 4th, 2019.

John Farndon
  • JOHN FARNDON (UNITED KINGDOM)

    John Farndon (born in 1960) is a British writer of books, plays, and music.
    He studied Earth sciences and English literature at Jesus College, Cambridge University, a Fellow of the 'Royal Literary Fund' at City and Guilds (London).
    John Farndon is also known for his translations of literature from Eurasia, including plays for the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings (2022).
    He has written over a thousand of works on science, nature, and other topics, which were translated into many languages and shortlisted five times for the Junior Science Book Prize.
    He was a co-winner of the “2019 EBRD Literature Prize” for translating the poetry by the Uzbek writer Hamid Ismailov - The Devil’s Dance, and a finalist for the “2020 US PEN translation award” for his translation of the Kazakh writer Rollan Seysenbaev’s “The Dead Wander in the Desert”.

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  • WILL FIRTH (GERMANY)

    Will Firth was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. He lives in Berlin and translates from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian. His best-received translations of recent years have been Aleksandar Gatalica’s “The Great War”, Faruk Šehić’s “Quiet Flows the Una”, and Tatjana Gromača’s “Divine Child”.

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  • GIULIA DE FLORIO (ITALIA)

    Giulia De Florio was born in 1984. Graduated from the Catholic University of Milan in Foreign Literatures and Languages (Russian and English), got a PhD in Slavic Cultures at the State University of Rome "Sapienza". She is now assistant professor at the State University of Parma where she teaches the Russian language and culture. Her areas of research are Russian children's literature, poetry and translation from Russian into Italian. She translates novels, poetry and short stories. Among the latest works, there is a collection of letters by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, an anthology of the Belarusian poet Dmitri Strotsev (Terra Sorella) and a historic essay by Irina Flige about a mass execution in 1937 in Karelia. She collaborates with various Italian publishing houses as a translator and consultant.
    She is actually translating a Russian young adult novel that deals with the LGBT+ topic.
    She is a member of Memorial Italia and translates articles and essays about the war in Ukraine and the Russian opposition in the country and in Europe.

  • FRANZISKA FÜCHSL (AUSTRIA)

    Franziska Füchsl is a writer, translator and typesetter living in Vienna and Kiel. She's a member of Versatorium, an association for poems and translation based in Vienna. Books: "rätsel in großer schrift" (edition mosaik 2018), "Tagwan" (Ritter Verlag 2020), "My Haarschwund" (Sampson Low 2020).

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  • LIA GAJDUŠEK (PORTUGAL)

    Lia Gajdušek is a translator, teacher, writer, and mother. She was raised to feel at home in the Portuguese and German languages, mastered Spanish and English, and also is fluent in Czech. In 2018, after finishing her degree in Law, she decided to follow her passion for words and languages: she taught Portuguese for foreigners, translated various types of texts from German and English into Portuguese, the language that speaks to her soul (from contracts to entire websites, from formal papers and certificates to lifestyle product descriptions, from manuals and instructions to short stories through university papers and general articles) and copyrighted on the most diverse topics (from wedding photography descriptions to product marketing, from sports betting websites to a language school). Although an eternal life-searcher, regarding translation, she has tremendous excitement to think about how to make people feel what one tries to say in different languages.

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  • CHRISTINE HENGEVOSS (GERMANY)

    Christine Hengevoss was born in Frankfurt/Oder in 1956 and grew up in Frankfurt/Oder and Moscow. She studied Russian and English languages and literatures at the Potsdam University of Education and worked as a foreign language teacher. She has been working as a freelance literary translator from Russian since 2012.

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  • ZSUZSA HETÉNYI (HUNGARY)

    Zsuzsa Hetényi was born in 1954. She is a Professor of Literature at ELTE, Budapest, an essay writer awarded the Belletrist Prize (2020), and a translator awarded the Füst Milán Prize (2002). She graduated from ELTE and studied for one year at Odessa State University (1976/77) where she wrote her first book on then semi-prohibited Isaac Babel. Her book on Russian-language Jewish writers of Ukraine was published also in English (CEU Press, 2008).
    Hetenyi’s main fields of research interest are dual identity, emigration, bilingualism in Russian literature of the 20th century. She started her translator’s work with samizdat. She translated from English to Hungarian Nabokov, Brodsky, from Russian (among others) Babel, Bulgakov, Chekhov, Grossman, Kharms, Sorokin, Voinovich, Zamyatin, and an anthology of Russian-Jewish prose written in Ukraine.
    In the Spring of 2022, she worked as a volunteer translator at the railway stations of Budapest and kept a diary on it on Facebook. She writes regularly about the war in Ukraine in newspapers, organizes round table discussions on this topic (youtube), to make clear what is behind the official picture shown in the Hungarian media influenced by the Russian political standpoint.

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  • MARINA HOBBEL (NORWAY)

    Marina Hobbel is a writer, translator and editor. She was born in Minsk, Belarus, and moved to Norway in 2003. She graduated from the Belarusian State University where she studied Belarusian and Russian language and literature, and got her Ph.D. in folkloristics. She has also a Master degree in Culture and Ideas Studies from the University in Oslo.
    She has been translating poems, prose and articles from Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian to Norwegian. She has, among others, translated Ukrainian Julia Musakovska, Iya Kiva, Oleh Kotsarev, Yuri Zavadski, Yuri Andrukhovych, Belarusian Dmitry Strotsev, Tanya Skarynkina, Julia Cimafiejeva, Alhierd Bacharevič, Vera Zhybul, Yuly Ilyushenko. Her latest translation is Oksana Zabuzhko’s novel “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” that comes out autumn 2023.
    She has published her own novels, short stories, poems, and essays in various media, and is an author of two printed books containing novels and short stories: “The Great Materialiser” and “A Butterfly, a Poor Little Leaf”.

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  • YANA HULTSIAYEVA (FRANCE)

    Yana Hultsiayeva was born in 1991 in the town of Narač, Belarus. In 2017, she graduated from Belarusian State University where she studied Slavic languages and literatures, and worked as a teacher of Polish and a Polish-Russian-Belarusian freelance translator. Yana writes prose and poems; she was one of the winners of the literary short story competition "10+10: Minsk", and completed a course at the Young Writers School organized by the Union of Belarusian Writers. Since the summer of 2021, Yana lives in France with her family, self-educating, working on a novel, and translating Belarusian and French poetry, short prose, and theater plays. She has successfully passed her French language exam and is planning to continue her education in literary translation.

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  • LOTTE JANSEN (DENMARK)

    Lotte Jansen is a translator. Her interest in language and translation goes way back – to living abroad as a child (Italian), studying languages at school (English, German, Latin, Russian) and eventually ending up with an MA in foreign languages (Russian and Italian) focusing on text and translation and a PhD in ‘Linguistics and Foreign Languages’ on the role of grammatical structures in narrative texts. She left the field for a while, but since 2016 has worked full time as a translator of mainly fiction from Russian, Italian and English into Danish. She has translated modern classics and contemporary authors.

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  • JURGITA JASPONYTĖ (LITHUANIA)

    Jurgita Jasponytė was born in 1981 in Zarasai. She began her studies at Vilnius Pedagogical University in 1999 and went on to receive a BA in Lithuanian philology and an MA in literature. She works as a librarian, raising her daughters Ugne and Jūre Jotvile. Her poetry collection Šaltupė (the name of a Zarasai street, meaning “cold river”) won the Lithuanian Writer’s Union First Book Contest. In 2015, she won the Zigmas Gėlė Prize for best poetic debut. Her second poetry collection Vartai Auštriejį (The Sharp Gates of Dawn) was published in 2019 and was awarded Vladas Šlaitas Prize and also Vilnius Mayor Prize for poems about Vilnius.
    Jurgita Jasponytė also translates prose and poetry from Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian.
    Picture credits to Gediminas Kajėnas

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  • HARALD HARTVIG JEPSEN (DENMARK)

    Harald Hartvig Jepsen is a translator from Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian into Danish. He has a M.A in Russian and Czech Philology from Aarhus University and studied language, history and literature in Moscow, Charles University in Prague and at the Ivan Franko University in Lviv and the National University Mohyla Academy in Kyiv. He translated several Russian detective stories, Russian literary manifestos from the 1910s and 1920s, as well as a monograph with central texts of Mikhail Bakhtin from Russian.
    Harald Hartvig Jepsen taught Ukrainian grammar, language efficiency and translation for military interpreters at the Danish Military College. Qua his work as an election expert with more than 8 years of in-country experience in Ukraine, he translated the Ukrainian election laws and codices into English since 2004. He understands and reads Belarusian, but has no documented translation experience from that language. He worked with Belarusian activists and in Belarus as a program manager at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, and also as a leading member of OSCE election observation missions.
    In Harald’s current position as a senior election expert (until February based in Kyiv), he works daily with and in Ukrainian and qua his job with IFES Ukraine, he also takes regular part in expert discussions (arranged by the OST research unit) on developing the Constitution and a new Electoral Code for a future free Belarus.

Hanna Komar
  • HANNA KOMAR (UNITED KINGDOM)

    Hanna Komar is an award-winning poet, translator, and civic activist from Belarus, a member of the PEN Belarus and the Union of Belarusian Writers, an honorary member of the English PEN. She has published three poetry collections. Some of her works have been translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, German, Czech, and English.
    In 2020-2022, Hanna participated in the Belarusian protests and wrote about it extensively; her texts were strongly political, but remained emotional and honest. She received the “Freedom of Speech 2020 Prize” from the Norwegian Authors’ Union (together with Dmitry Strotsev, a Belarusian poet).
    Hanna is currently taking an MA in Creative Writing: Writing the City at the University of Westminster in London.

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  • Steve Komarnyckyj (UNITED KINGDOM)

    Steve Komarnyckyj is a British-Ukrainian writer, linguist, poet, and translator who holds two PEN awards and has taught creative writing at the London based Poetry School. His works have appeared in Vsesvit magazine (Ukraine’s most influential literary journal), Index on Censorship, Poetry Salzburg Review, The North, the Echo Room, and Modern Poetry in Translation to name a few. He has written extensively on the subject of Russia's hybrid war on the west for publications such as The Byline Times and Euromaidan Press. His first book of original poetry "The August Rain” (2017) was described as "the articulation of what it means to be human” by poet and BBC broadcaster Sean Street.

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  • TYLER LANGENDORFER (GERMANY)

    Tyler Langendorfer was born in the US in 1984. He is a translator of Russian, German, Dutch, and French specializing in both nonfiction and fiction texts, including children's and young adult literature. After many years working in the legal and nonprofit sectors, Tyler became a full-time translator in 2018 and moved to Berlin, Germany the same year. He holds an MA in Culture, Policy and Management from City, University of London and has been providing translations for the NGO Rights in Russia since 2020. Tyler never tires of picking up new languages and is currently learning Ukrainian and Hungarian.

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  • KANSTANTSIN LOICHYTS (BELARUS)

    Kanstantsin Loichyts is a translator and interpreter who among other languages has been working with Ukrainian, Belarusian, and English. Born and raised in West Polesia, Belarus, he graduated from Minsk State Linguistic University where he studied the English language and literature, as well as Chinese.
    Kanstantsin has been working in translations and interpreting for about a decade, with a recent focus on translating books on history, politics, and religion along with translating and localizing videos from Ukrainian and Russian into English.
    He has also been developing his own project aimed at translating poems and articles from several languages into his native West Polesian dialect of the Belarusian language.

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  • JENYA MIRONAVA (UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)

    A native of Minsk, Belarus, Jenya (Yauheniya) Mironava is a scholar and teacher who is fortunate to have turned her lifelong passion for languages into a career. She studied Czech, German, and French, as well as some Dutch, modern Greek, and Japanese for pure fun. She holds an MA in Comparative Slavic and East European Literatures and Cultures from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, where she is currently teaching Russian and Belarusian.
    Jenya’s research focuses on twentieth-century Slavic literature, with emphasis on questions of temporality, memory, formal experimentation, and linguistic play. She studies border crossings and threshold phenomena: émigré culture and exile, poetic prose, synesthesia, and word/image relations. Committed to making Belarusian literature and culture more prominent in Slavic scholarship and curricula in the U.S., Jenya recently ventured into the realm of translation. She is eager to help carry Belarusian words across borders and thus make them freer.

     

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  • LINDSAY MUNFORD (UNITED KINGDOM)

    Lindsay Munford is a British translator specializing in human rights advocacy, non-fiction, and news media. She also works as a multilingual researcher for private clients, research organizations, NGOs, and academia. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Russian and Politics from Durham University, UK, and is accredited by the UK Chartered Institute of Linguists as a Russian and Arabic to English translator.
    For the past decade, Lindsay has supplied translations to the NGO Rights in Russia and she recently co-translated a major report for “Memorial”, the Russian human rights organization. Her Arabic translations have been published online by Amnesty International and other media outlets, and in print as part of the anthology Voices of the Nakba: A Living History of Palestine (2021).
    Now based in the UK, Lindsay has previously lived and worked in Russia, Oman, and the US.

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  • LYDIA NAGEL (GERMANY)

    Lydia Nagel was born in Wismar on the Baltic Sea in 1977. She studied Slavic Studies and Cultural Studies and works with several Slavic languages. Lydia has been translating Ukrainian drama and literature into German continuously for more than ten years, her best-received translations of recent years have been Natalia Vorozhbyt’s plays and the plays for the Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings in 2022. She is a founding member of Drama Panorama: Forum for Translation and Theater e. V., as well as a member of the VdÜ.

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  • Anne Noack (GERMANY)

    Anne Noack is a translator and social activist. She studied Slavic languages, history and translation in Dresden, Leipzig and Tomsk.
    She always tries to make her language worthwile, supporting Russian-speaking refugees from Georgia or Chechnya with their asylum cases, translating brochures of social support structures. She took part in a multilingual project of historians, researchers and activists from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Germany on the cultures of remembrance of the Second World War, interpreting at meetings and translating several of the essays developed there.
    In February 2022, shocked by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and at the same time compelled to act, she became active in a grassroots organisation for the delivery of humanitarian goods. She also helps refugees from Ukraine with their daily needs in an unfamiliar environment and gives German classes.

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  • ARJA PIKKUPEURA (FINLAND)

    Arja Pikkupeura is an Authorized Translator from Russian into Finnish, MA.
    Studied Russian philology and World literature in Jyväskylä University, Finland 1976-1984, MA 1984. Member of The Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters (SKTL).
    Arja Pikkupeura has more than 30 published translations from Russian into Finnish, including 4 novels by Valeria Narbikova, 5 novels by Viktor Pelevin, 5 novels and 4 short story collections by Ludmila Ulitskaya.
    Received Mikael Agricola award from The Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters (SKTL) and The Finnish Book Foundation in the year 2019 for translation of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s short story collection “The people of our Czar”.
    The latest translation, the novel by Kira Yarmysh “The Incredible Events in Women's Cell Number Three” will be published in October 2022.

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  • TATYANA PITCHULINA (FINLAND)

    Tatyana was born in Ukraine, her father is Ukrainian and mother is Belarusian, she lives in Finland since 1996. Tatyana feels as a bridge between cultures and has a passion for translating poems and songs.
    Tatyana has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Tampere (Multilingual Communication &Translation) and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in logistics.
    She is an expert of international trade and intercultural relations and gained long-term experience in sales management, marketing management and general management positions. Presently, Tatyana is working as COO of Finnish EcoCoaching Academy in green transformation education, and she is an entrepreneur in B2B Trade Ambassador that offers consulting and translation services.
    In June 2022, Tatyana with her two fellow sisters Ritva-Liisa Luomaranta and Ira Hammerman established Suomenoja Ukraine Aid help center in Espoo, Finland. Tatyana is a member of the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters and of the Finnish Management Consultants Association.

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  • MĀRA POLAKOVA (LATVIA)

    Māra Poļakova (born 1975) is a Latvian translator. She studied in Rīga, Moscow and Jerusalem. She has worked as a translator since 2003 and has translated more than 100 books from English, German, Russian, Hebrew, Ukrainian and, recently, Belarusian. For her, the most important among the authors she’s translated are Serhiy Zhadan, David Grossman, Edward Whittemore and Terry Pratchett.

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  • ALEKSANDRA SMERECHAŃSKA (UNITED KINGDOM)

    Aleksandra Smerechańska is a Polish artist, poet, translator, songwriter, and vocal coach, born in Belarus, raised in Poland; she is currently getting her Bachelor Degree in Vocals & Songwriting in London.
    Author and editor of the bilingual poetry book in two languages - Polish and Russian - „I breathe words” (“Oddycham słowami”).
    Has been translating poems, prose, articles, websites, social media content, and lyrics between Russian, Polish, and English for over 5 years.
    Her works have been published multiple times in the main collective poetry magazine in Poland “Poezja Dzisiaj” (“Poetry Today”), for which she also worked as a technical editor in 2019-2020.
    Aleksandra is currently working on her second poetry book, which is going to be published in 3 languages as a tribute to multilingual artists and literature. She is planning to release her first EP album as Alexa Ash.

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  • TRINE SØNDERGAARD (DENMARK)

    Trine Søndergaard translates fiction from Russian into Danish.
    She graduated from the Russian Department at Copenhagen University in 1999, studied and worked in Moscow in the nineties and has travelled in the former Soviet Union and Russia since 1989.
    She has worked more or less full time as a literary translator for the past 8-10 years. She translates contemporary, as well as classical Russian literature.
    Trine Søndergaard has pitched some titles for Danish publishers, for instance Anna Kozlova's "F20", Vladimir Makanin's "The Man Hole", a collection of short stories by Ivan Bunin. She has, among others, translated Dostoyevsky's “White Nights”, Tolstoy's “Hadji Murat”, Ludmila Petrushevskaya's “We Were Stolen”, and two collections of her short stories. Trine’s latest translations are novels by Kira Yarmysh and Guzel Yakhina.
    Picture credits to Anne Steen

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  • JUDIT TAUZ (HUNGARY)

    Judit Tauz was born in Uzhgorod (Ukraine, 19 June 1949). Since 1975, she lives in Hungary. Graduated from the Leningrad Musical Conservatory named after Rimsky-Korsakov, piano. Translates into Hungarian since 1988.

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  • ARCH TAIT (UNITED KINGDOM)

    Arch Tait has a PhD in Russian Literature from Cambridge University. Since 1991 he has translated 40 books by leading Russian authors of fiction and non-fiction.
    Titles translated include: Mikhail Gorbachev, The New Russia (Posle Kremlia), Andrei Piontkovsky, Another Look into Putin's Soul, Anna Politkovskaya, Putin's Russia, Ludmila Ulitskaya, Daniel Stein: Interpreter, Akhmed Zakaev, Subjugate or Exterminate: a Memoir of Russia's Wars Against Chechnya
    Picture credits to Judith Marshall

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  • ARTŪRAS VALIONIS (LITHUANIA)

    Artūras Valionis (b. 1973) is a writer, poet, and translator. A member of Lithuanian Writers’ Union; a member of the Association LATGA. In 2010, he was given “The Status of Art Creator” by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.
    Artūras Valionis has published five poetry books, one poetry anthology, and a book of essays. His poems have been translated into 14 languages; Artūras is a winner of a lot of prestigious literary awards.
    The poet also translated into Lithuanian many poems of American poets A. Rich, M. Katz, J. Rothenberg, J. Kinsella, K. Keys, Polish poets K. I. Galczyński, T. Różycki, B. Konstrat, Latvian poets I. Balode, K. Verdiņš, Ukrainian poetess O. Herasymiuk, Belarusian poets M. Bahdanovič, A. Chadanovič, and Catalan poet X. Farre.
    A. Valionis initiated and participated in joint projects with prominent jazz musicians; Lithuanian composers have written music based on Valionis’ work.
    Artūras completed a four-year doctoral studies program at the Graduate School for Social Research in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (1996-2000) and holds a PhD of Social Sciences (Sociology). The PhD was awarded at a meeting of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2003.

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  • KEVIN WINDLE (AUSTRALIA)

    Kevin Windle graduated in Russian from the University of Liverpool and received his doctorate in Slavic Studies from McGill University in Montreal. He taught Russian language and literature and Translation Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he lives in retirement. His major publications include The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies (co-edited with Kirsten Malmkjaer, 2011), the biography Undesirable: Captain Zuzenko and the Workers of Australia and the World (2012), and numerous literary and scholarly translations. These include Vasyl Sokil’s A Night so Long (1990), Sergei Aksakov’s Notes of a Provincial Wildfowler (1998), Andrzej Drawicz’s literary biography of Mikhail Bulgakov (2001) and Jerzy Lutowski’s Love Thy Saviour (2010). For his translations from various languages, he has been awarded several prizes, including the Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs (FIT) Aurora Borealis prize for the translation of non-fiction. Artyom Vesyoly’s Russia Washed in Blood, in his translation, was shortlisted in 2021 for the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize.