Workshop for Balkan Authors and Translators

The Workshop for Balkan Authors and Translators was organised by the National Book Centre in Alexandroupolis from the 29th of August through the 5th of September 1998, bringing together authors and translators from seven Balkan nations, in a 10-day work meeting for the purpose of translating literary works. The thirty-three writers and translators who took part in the workshop, coming from Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, FYROM, Romania, Serbia and Turkey, confirmed the conviction of the organisers of the meeting that communication on a cultural level is communication on a community level. The ability for someone to come into contact with the culture of a nation is the ability to recognise the mindset of its people, to discern the problems and issues which preoccupy it, to localise its particularities, or to track common elements. The texts which were translated over the course of the Workshop originate from some authors who have already been translated into Greek and are well-known to the Greek public, but also from authors whose works have been translated into Greek for the first time, during this workshop.