TRANSLATORIUM Literary and Translation Festival

TRANSLATORIUM is the only literary and translation festival for now in Ukraine, which is dedicated to literary translation and the International Translator’s Day. Since 2017, it has been annually held in Khmelnytskyi in late September — early October.

The Festival is curated by the VERBatsiya translation group.

Every year, the Festival chooses a new theme, according to which curators create events and special projects. During the three days of the Festival, more than 20 events are held: lectures, readings, literary translation workshops, professional discussions, and informal meetings. Among the participants are well-known translators, poets, writers, publishers, and cultural managers from Ukraine and abroad. The program is complemented by the projects that work on the border of different arts, in particular music and literature, literature and visual art, etc. Because the team considers translation to be not only a process of reproducing text in different languages, but also of transferring and comprehending senses in different sign systems.

In 2022, the Festival was canceled, but the team didn't suspend its activities. As an NGO, TRANSLATORIUM kept working with and for the translation community, creating separate projects relevant in the context of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine: meetings for translators in different cities, various public charitable cultural events in Ukraine and abroad, and the group residency for translators in the Carpathian Mountains.

In 2023, the TRANSLATORIUM team will come back with the Festival in autumn regardless of the war and all the circumstances. The theme of the program will be connected to a concept silence as a part of new dialogues which are built now by Ukrainians who are experiencing trauma. Although the format of the Festival will be reduced to only two days and fifteen events.

Apart from the Festival, in June 2023, the team will launch the BAZHAN residency for poets and poetry translators in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine. The project is kindly supported by Versopolis platform, supported by EU Creative Europe.