The first collective translation workshop dedicated to the work of Agustina Bessa-Luís took place on 4 October at the Cultural Section of the Embassy of Portugal in Athens as part of the celebrations of the birth centenary of the Portuguese writer (1922-2022).
Translator Nikos Pratsinis coordinated the collective literary translation process focused on the short story "O homem que eu matei" (Primeiros contos e outros contos, ed. Relógio d'Água) in the company of Ana Maria soares, Professor of Portuguese Language at the University of Athens, who, as a native speaker and specialist in literature, helped to clarify different linguistic and pragmatic issues of Portuguese, as well as a broader vision regarding the work of Agustina Bessa-Luís.
The fifteen participants, mostly Greeks with a high level of knowledge of the Portuguese language, had already worked on the short story by Agustina Bessa-Luís individually, and during the three hours of the workshop they presented their versions, raised doubts or objections and exchanged linguistic, pragmatic and cultural views with the Translator and the Teacher.
This educational and cultural initiative, which was supported by Camões, I.P. and the publisher Relógio d'Água, produced a very satisfactory result which, after being completed and edited by Nikos Pratsinis, will be published in the free-access digital literary magazine Hartis (November 2022 edition) with the aim of making Agustina Bessa-Luís' work better known and marking the birth centenary of this Camões Prize (2004).
This collective literary translation workshop, the first of a series of equal initiatives, was inaugurated by the Deputy Head of Mission, Dr. Thiago Carvalho, who offered the Port of Honour and welcomed the fifteen participants. The next workshop on collective literary translation will take place in early December and its object of analysis and translation will be the poems of José Saramago in the context of the celebrations of the centenary of the Portuguese Nobel Prize for Literature.