"Translation" mag
A fresh take on foreign classics and contemporary world literature
О журнале
The magazine Translation publishes translations of classical and contemporary poetry, philosophical works and treatises as well as scientific articles on the complexities of translation. The magazine is fully independent and nonprofit. It is the first and only magazine of its type being published in Russia.
In 2021, while the pandemic kept most of the world indoors, the creators of this magazine had an idea: What if our current situation instead of hindering communication became an opportunity to connect. On March 21, 2021, during UNESCO World Poetry Day, an international online project called “Poetry 21” was launched by our team. For 24 hours, poets around the world, from 92 countries, read their works in their native tongues. The magazine’s founders believe that nowadays cross-cultural communication is not just essential, but critical, regardless of any differences. We sincerely believe there is no better or more fulfilling form of the communication than poetry and its translation.
Consequently, the debut issue of “Translation” was launched in the summer of 2024. And since every issue includes translations of prominent contemporary poets around the world such as Antonio Gamoneda, Bei Dao, Mahmoud Darwish, Yang Lian, Hélène Dorion, Kutti Revathi, Ming Di, Ann Cotten, Gonca Özmen, Rafael Saravia, Nilton Santiago as well as those poets that left a substantial historical and cultural footprint such as Bertolt Brecht, César Vallejo, Ahmad Shamlou, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clément Marot, Carlo Goldoni, Pindar, and others. Every issue dedicates nearly a third of its pages to poetry from a specific nation—bringing much-needed global attention to voices that are often unfairly ignored. Past issues have spotlighted nations including Venezuela, Algeria, Turkey, Peru, China, Serbia, and Iran.
Translating poetry is far from a mechanical process. In this magazine, our translators are poets themselves. This harkens back to a rich Soviet tradition where internationally acclaimed poets, such as Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, divided their time between writing their own work and translating others. Often our poets are in direct communication with original authors, ensuring that nothing is lost in translation.
Another core goal of our magazine is honoring and keeping alive the poetry of indigenous voices, many of whose languages are tragically on the verge of disappearing completely. For instance, we recently featured translations of poetry from the Wampis language—a tongue spoken by around 3,000 people in Peru. Another issue had translation of poems from the Lhasa dialect spoken by people from Tibet, China.
All poems are published in bilingual form. The original text is presented on the left and the translation on the right, allowing the reader to compare the two side by side, at least visually. We also often invite artists to present poetry from around the world using calligraphy thus allowing our readers to get a feel for the physical form of the source text.
For the authors of this magazine, this is not a job or a business. No one working on this is getting a salary. This is a passion project that, we hope, brings our readers closer to the immense richness and diversity that humanity has produced and continues to create.
In 2021, while the pandemic kept most of the world indoors, the creators of this magazine had an idea: What if our current situation instead of hindering communication became an opportunity to connect. On March 21, 2021, during UNESCO World Poetry Day, an international online project called “Poetry 21” was launched by our team. For 24 hours, poets around the world, from 92 countries, read their works in their native tongues. The magazine’s founders believe that nowadays cross-cultural communication is not just essential, but critical, regardless of any differences. We sincerely believe there is no better or more fulfilling form of the communication than poetry and its translation.
Consequently, the debut issue of “Translation” was launched in the summer of 2024. And since every issue includes translations of prominent contemporary poets around the world such as Antonio Gamoneda, Bei Dao, Mahmoud Darwish, Yang Lian, Hélène Dorion, Kutti Revathi, Ming Di, Ann Cotten, Gonca Özmen, Rafael Saravia, Nilton Santiago as well as those poets that left a substantial historical and cultural footprint such as Bertolt Brecht, César Vallejo, Ahmad Shamlou, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clément Marot, Carlo Goldoni, Pindar, and others. Every issue dedicates nearly a third of its pages to poetry from a specific nation—bringing much-needed global attention to voices that are often unfairly ignored. Past issues have spotlighted nations including Venezuela, Algeria, Turkey, Peru, China, Serbia, and Iran.
Translating poetry is far from a mechanical process. In this magazine, our translators are poets themselves. This harkens back to a rich Soviet tradition where internationally acclaimed poets, such as Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, divided their time between writing their own work and translating others. Often our poets are in direct communication with original authors, ensuring that nothing is lost in translation.
Another core goal of our magazine is honoring and keeping alive the poetry of indigenous voices, many of whose languages are tragically on the verge of disappearing completely. For instance, we recently featured translations of poetry from the Wampis language—a tongue spoken by around 3,000 people in Peru. Another issue had translation of poems from the Lhasa dialect spoken by people from Tibet, China.
All poems are published in bilingual form. The original text is presented on the left and the translation on the right, allowing the reader to compare the two side by side, at least visually. We also often invite artists to present poetry from around the world using calligraphy thus allowing our readers to get a feel for the physical form of the source text.
For the authors of this magazine, this is not a job or a business. No one working on this is getting a salary. This is a passion project that, we hope, brings our readers closer to the immense richness and diversity that humanity has produced and continues to create.
