Interview of the month – Olga Patrounova (professional translator and interpereter) What is your relationship with the Greek language? How and why did you start learning it? When I was younger, I spent a few years with my parents and sister in India, where my father, an engineering professor, was posted as a UNESCO delegate. On our way back to Moscow we travelled around…
One Trial – Four Languages
Exhibition and Conference on the birth of Simultaneous Interpretation in the Nuremberg Trial Friday, November 20, 2015 “All about Interpreting” The exhibition on the ground floor of Goethe-Institut is actually an installation featuring the biographies of the interpreters who worked at the Nuremberg Trial (written in German and in Greek). It is an interesting exhibition in a beautiful, cozy space. The conference started with an…
Interview of the month – Konstantina Papyraki
Interview of the month – Konstantina Papyraki (philologist, Greek language teacher) Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you first start teaching Modern Greek? My name is Konstantina Papyraki and I come from Heraklion, Crete, where I still reside at the moment. I graduated from the Athens School of Philosophy in 2008, having studied at the Faculty of Philology, with a specialization…
Translation: how subjective can it get?
Every profession, science and activity has its own set of rules. Some rules are broadly established and widely accepted, while others aren’t. There are also unwritten rules, corporate policies/cultures, schools of thought when it comes to science, and probably many other types of rules, as well as each individual’s personality, which play a role in the process. Let’s see what happens in the case…
Interview of the month – Kleopatra Elaiotriviari
Interview of the month – Kleopatra Elaiotriviari (translator – Vice-President of the Panhellenic Association of Professional Translators Graduates of the Ionian University) Tell us a bit about yourself. How did you decide to pursue a career in translation? In the early 90s, a family friend mentioned the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the Ionian University in Corfu to my mother, which was a…
Interview of the month – Vassilis Tomanas
Interview of the month – Vassilis Tomanas (translator-publisher) What was it that drew you to translation in the first place and how did you start working in the field? It was by mere chance that I took my first chance with translation. In 1975, a friend of mine asked me to translate a text from a subversive French magazine. The text intrigued me so…
Interview of the month – Nikos Sarantakos
Interview of the month – Nikos Sarantakos (Translator for the EU) You work as a translator for the European Parliament. How did you start working as a translator and how would you describe your experience working for one of the EU institutions? Ever since I was young, I had a passion for literature. During my studies at the National Technical University of Athens I…
Interview of the month – Soti Triantafyllou
Tell us a little bit about yourself. When did you realise you wanted to become a writer and how did you start working as a literary translator? I wanted to be a writer from a very young age, but I didn’t know how. I started studying various subjects, and I am still studying today. What’s more, I didn’t want to create a negative image…
Interview of the month – Yannis Kalifatidis
Interview of the month – Yannis Kalifatidis (Translator – musician) What sparked your interest in translation and music? What is your main occupation today? My relationship with music started in my teenage years. Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps as a reaction, or maybe as a need to express myself. No matter how it started, the truth is that I spent many years adjusting my…
Interview of the month – Panagiotis Karantais
Interview of the month – Panagiotis Karantais (Translator, Linguistic coordinator) Tell us about yourself and your studies. How did you start your career in localisation? I obtained my bachelor’s degree in German literature from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where I chose a series of translation classes as my direction. While studying, I was working as secretary at the Panhellenic Association of Translators…