Morning meetings with translators over coffee are a wonderful tradition of the TRANSLATORIUM Festival, which this year will be brought to the space of Book Arsenal. This is an invitation to enjoy a cup of coffee and slowly start a new festival day. In an informal conversation, we will talk to Yurko Prokhasko about his translation routine, some interesting stories from his professional experience, and everything that goes on behind the scenes of creating a text in translation.

Have you ever dreamed of looking over the professional’s shoulder and finding out what it is like to translate a Chinese historical novel? The translator Oleksandra Bespala will lift the curtain on her work on an excerpt from a novel Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (working title), telling us about the challenges and highlights of working on this text and inviting us to reflect on the complexities and creative solutions behind each sentence. The audience will have a chance to ask questions.

Can contemporary literature, in its various manifestations, become the material remains of human activity that future archaeologists will use to study us? As a frequent participant in archaeological expeditions, Maks Lyzhov creates poetic texts that will one day be used to decode today’s Ukrainian reality. To do this, he has chosen haiku, a poetic genre that is atypical for Ukrainian literature. The project brings together literature, music and video art. By interacting with each other, all three components expand the concept of translation, and the archaeological theme in the visual images prompts us to reflect on memory.

How is contemporary Ukrainian literature perceived in other countries? Has it received sufficient attention until 2022? What challenges do translators face in translating it? We will talk about this and more with translators from Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Poland.

Rantau is a Malaysian word that encapsulates the experience of being in-between or wandering away from home. Today, this word resonates with the lives of many Ukrainian artists and writers. However, it is also relevant for victims of colonial policies in other countries. How are these experiences reflected in texts, and how can they be communicated through other media? We will talk about this with the poet and writer Anna Gruver and the artist and curator of TRANSLATORIUM art projects Veronika Yadukha.