Littransformer Translation Workshop Magazine
Photo shooting
Video production
How might translation function as an inter-space, i.e. a creative regenerative commons, which fosters genuine dialogue across diverse languages and cultures that coexist in our cities?
Toward this aim, the Littransformer workshop sets out to create an engaging cross-cultural environment where participants are asked to interact creatively by translating poetry authored by the poets from represented cities of literature. Apart from the lectures and group sessions, the participants will be given time and space to work in pairs and across three languages: their two native languages, and English, the bridge language between them.
Challenge
The Littransformer magazine is a final publication that collects the texts of the Littransformer translation workshops that took place in Lviv in 2019. The essence of Littransformer master classes was translation from so-called small languages to other small languages through the medium of English. The work was carried out under the supervision of curators Irena Odrekhivska and Aron Aji. The magazine contains information about the participants and the texts and originals from which the translation was made.
The magazine uses several experimental decorative elements, one of the pages, for example, has double numbering.
The cover of the magazine is a scanned page with a correction by one of the workshop participants, which reflects the essence of the work process.
Despite the fact that the magazine is about printed texts, we chose to use large color photo scans for the entire magazine column to convey the atmosphere of the integration and cultural component of the master classes.
In the names of the texts, we like to leave a lot of free space, emphasizing the artistic presentation of the names, thinking and playing with fonts, as it happens when searching for suitable words for translation, when the terms are twisted and embellished in the mind, the text is declared and embellished. Words spin in the head and are often placed in strange positions. The magazine is like a translation process, unpredictable, somewhat chaotic, in constant search, as the cover actually hints at.
Each page of the magazine reveals the process in more detail.
The magazine is published in the same format and on the same paper as the Reading of the Young City magazines.