Babel pipeline "Nord Stream 3" reaches its goal
Press Release - Berlin, 10.12.2021
Nord Stream 3 - A project of Forum Mare Balticum e.V.
The Baltic Sea Culture Pipeline “Nord Stream 3” has reached its preliminary goal: With more than 60 new translations, primarily essays, the virtual Baltic Sea library has experienced one of its most comprehensive expansions within a year and now includes an impressive number of 350 authors – writers and translators.
The project’s focus was in particular on the border regions and peripheries of the Baltic Sea region: Lapland, Karelia, Ingermanland, Latgale, Kaliningrad. With the selection of the newly added texts, we explore the question of whether a common identity is conceivable in the Baltic Sea region and thus enter into dialogue between our diverse languages via translation. Among others, the following essays have been newly translated into German:
Brücken ins Nirgendwo? Identität der Bewohner des Kaliningrader Gebiets im 21. Jahrhundert by Ilya Dementiev
Ebenen und Kanten: eine höchstpersönliche Sicht auf das historische Lettgallen by Sergey Moreino
In Lappland (Lotten von Düben) by Eva Dahlman
Tucholsky und die Ostsee by Klaus Leesch
Zu Besuch bei Jurij Dmitrijew by Sergey Lebedev
A highlight of the project was a reading on 30 September 2021, the International Translators’ Day. Mareen Bruns, Elna Lindgens and Franziska Zwerg read texts from the Baltic Sea Library in the Museum of Unheard (of) Things in Berlin-Schöneberg – with a live transmission to the street.
On the last few metres of the pipeline, thanks to additional support from the EU's "i-Portunus" mobility fund, we were also able to make recordings of the poem “Baltics” by Literature Nobel Prize winner Tomas Tranströmer and bring it into a new "audios" section. His poem "Baltics" – which is something of an anthem to the Baltic Sea Library – can now be listened to in Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Lithuanian and Sami. It is read either by the translators themselves or by actors.
Our thanks go to the German Translator's Fund, which made the Nord Stream 3 project possible with an amount of almost 60,000 €, within the framework of the Neustart Kultur Programme of the German Federal Government / the Commissioner for Culture and the Media – as well as to all the translators involved.
The Baltic Sea Library is a virtual library with an open-source character. It currently contains representative excerpts from novels and stories, as well as poems and essays, in short: literary texts in 14 languages. In addition to the nine official languages of the Baltic Sea countries, there are also texts in Sami, Norwegian and Icelandic as well as in Latin and Old English. We see ourselves as a model project for the digital mediation of a literary region via translation, since the Baltic Sea region as a communal-dialogical narrative can only be grasped in all its linguistic diversity.
Contact:
Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke, Forum Mare Balticum e.V. (Artistic Director): +49 (0) 30 692 77 35
Nora Sefa (Public Relations): This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Sound of Baltics – Recording Tomas Tranströmer’s translators in the Baltic Region
He took them out to the Baltic, through the marvellous labyrinth of islands and waters.
And those who met on board and were carried by the same hull for a few hours, or days, how much did they come to know one another?
Conversations in misspelled English, understanding and misunderstanding but very little conscious falsehood.
How much did they come to know one another?
(From "Baltics" by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton)
On the last metres of our Nord Stream 3 project, we were able to make one of our most read texts from the Baltic Sea library, the poem cycle "Baltics" (“Östersjöar”) by Tomas Tranströmer sound.
The poem was written in 1974 in a divided Baltic Sea, remembering personal connections from the times before and reviving friendship relations across the borders in spite of all hindrances. It is translated in 12 languages on our platform and some of the translations came about on our request before Tranströmer received the Nobel prize in 2011.
Whilst Tranströmer’s voice was lost in 1990 after a stroke, we undertook a journey this late autumn to give it a a voice through his translators in the Baltic region.
Our platform now features audio recordings of "Baltics" in Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Lithuanian and Sami, which we especially created together with the translators during corresponding trips. Recordings in Latvian and Russian have already been made available before. For Swedish, we are expecting the original recording by Tomas Tranströmer himself from the year 1990, which we will be able to post after New Year.
In addition to the support from the "Neustart Kultur" programme by the German government, the trips for recordings to four countries – Lithuania, Estonia, Sweden and Denmark – were made possible by the EU mobility fund i-Portunus. Our thanks also go to Monica Tranströmer whom we met at her home in Stockholm for the rights to publish the poem digitally.
The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
International Translators´ Day 30.09.2021
On Thursday, 30.09.2021 / 6 pm the translators will read: Mareen Bruns (Berlin), Elna Lindgens (Munich), Franziska Zwerg (Potsdam) - Introduction: Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke (Berlin).
Saint Hieronymus is considered the patron saint of translators. He retired to the desert to translate the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into living Latin. The International Translators' Day (German: Hieronymustag) is dedicated to him, on which translators leave their chambers to become publicly visible.
Nord Stream3, a project funded by the the German government's "Neustart Kultur" program, brings together essayistic texts from 1990 to the present from the border regions and peripheries of the Baltic Sea area.
The introduction presents the rebirth of a sea and its hidden linguistic diversity.
News July - November 2021
Nord Stream 3 - Babel pipeline thru the Baltic Sea
The translations of following essays to German have been made available thanks to the support of Deutscher Übersetzerfonds from the state programme "NEUSTART KULTUR" of the commissioner of the federal German government for culture and media (Beauftragte des Bundes für Kultur und Medien):
- Riga - eine Heimstatt für Ideen? Essay by Pēteris Bankovskis. Translated from Latvian by Sven Otto
- Meine Stadt. Essay by Gintaras Grajauskas. Translated from Lithuanian by Claudia Sinnig
- Weiße Nächte und schwarze. Translation of two Letters by Jaan Kaplinski and Johannes Salminen from Finnish resp. Swedish by Maximilian Murmann and Elna Lindgens
- Von einem Ort zum anderen. Essay by Birgitta Trotzig. Translated from Swedish by Hannes Langendörfer
- Geraubtes Land. Essay by Elin Anna Labba. Translated from Swedish by Hedwig M. Binder
- Brücken ins Nirgendwo? Identität der Bewohner des Kaliningrader Gebiets im 21. Jahrhundert. Essay by Ilya Dementiev. Translated from English by Barbara Wiebking
- Neue Erkenntisse über Labyrinthe. Essay by Christer Westerdahl. Translated from Swedish by Christina Möllring
- In Lappland (Lotten von Düben). Essay by Eva Dahlman. Translated from Swedish by Maike Barth
- Elena Guro: Malerin, Dichterin, Pantheistin. St. Petersburg – Karelische Landenge 1877-1913. Essay by Margareta Tillberg. Translated from English by Maria Meinel and to Russian by Natalya Zlydneva
- Ebenen und Kanten: eine höchstpersönliche Sicht auf das historische Lettgallen. Essay by Sergey Moreino. Translated from Russian by Franziska Zwerg
- Bekenntnis. Performative Produktion von Geschlechtsidentität und Gedächtnis in Tõnu Õnnepalus Roman "Im Grenzland". Essay by Eneken Laanes. Translated from English by Anna Hildegard Czinczoll
- Eine Reise in zwanzig Stationen entlang der Landesgrenzen Skandinaviens. Essay by Malin Nord. Translated from Swedish by Ricarda Essrich
News June 2021
Another half-year passed and our Baltic babel pipeline continues to pump new essays and cross-languages translations. Many of them – translations to and from German - have been made available in the framework of our project “Nord Stream 3”. Those translations were made possible thanks to the support of Deutscher Übersetzerfonds from the state programme "NEUSTART KULTUR" of the commissioner of the federal German government for culture and media (Beauftragte des Bundes für Kultur und Medien).
„Everything since my childhood has led me to the work I do now.“ Yury Dmitriev in “A visit to Yury Dmitriev”. Interview by Sergey Lebedev.
We recommend a conversation now available in Russian, German and English between the writer and journalist Sergey Lebedev and the Karelian historian and human rights activist Yury Dmitriev, conducted after the latter was first released from prison in 2018. Dmitriev who has worked on mapping the places where Stalin carried out his Great Terror regime, speaks about what it does to him to locate mass graves and what sense the identification of the then murdered has today. By relocating the human remains of the victims to new cemeteries, he created space, so that “people can come to remember”. He as well speaks of faith which helps him to find peace with those who have brought guilt upon themselves.
Other (newly translated) uploaded works are:
One who came back / Erinnerungen eines Überlebenden. Memoir by Josef Katz. Now in Polish translation by Dorota Stroińska.
Henry Parland. Poems. (Russian translation) Translated from Swedish by Olga Mäeots.
Germania (Estonian translation) by Cornelius Tacitus. Translated from Latin by Kristi Viiding.
Ice and Heather. Essay by Jaan Kaplinski.
Плоскости и грани: частное видение исторической Латгалии. Essay by Sergey Moreino.
Esteros žirklutės. Essay by Mindaugas Kvietkauskas.
En resa längs Nordens nationsgränser i tjugo punkter. Essay by Malin Nord.
Mein Vater, Flüchtling aus Karelien. Essay by Jukka-Pekka Pietiäinen. Translated from Finnish by Ilse Winkler (In original: Isäni, evakko)
Страна которой нет. Essay by Sergey Zavyalov.
Das Land, das nicht ist. Essay by Sergey Zavyalov. Translated from Russian by Christine Hengevoß.
Das Alexandria der Ostsee. Essay by Johannes Salminen. Translated from Swedish by Elna Lindgens.
Von Isländern, Eisbären und Königen. Essay by Gert Kreutzer.
In autumn some of the texts will be recorded as audio files as well.
Good reading otherwise!
With best wishes
chief editor
Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke
News January - June 2021
The translations of following essays to German have been made available thanks to the support of Deutscher Übersetzerfonds from the state programme "NEUSTART KULTUR" of the commissioner of the federal German government for culture and media (Beauftragte des Bundes für Kultur und Medien):
- In Wasser geschrieben. Essay by Clas Zilliacus. Translated from English by Mirko Bonné
- Frühling in Kaunas: Henry Parland in Litauen. Essay by Per Stam. Translated from English by Mirko Bonné
- Der Vorzug der Randlage. Essay by Lars Kleberg. Translated from English by Mirko Bonné
- Grenzen und Grenzpolitik oder Ein russisches Ei des Kolumbus. Essay by René Nyberg. Translated from Swedish by Elna Lindgens
- Porträt einer Zeit - Anna Achmatowas lyrisches Werk. Essay by Barbara Lönnqvist. Translated from Swedish by Mareen Bruns
- Karelienmythologie in der finnlandschwedischen Literatur. Essay by Agneta Rahikainen. Translated from Swedish by Karl-Ludwig Wetzig
- Mein Vater, Flüchtling aus Karelien. Essay by Jukka-Pekka Pietiäinen. Translated from Finnish by Ilse Winkler
- Herder, Finnland, Europa. Essay by Sakari Ollitervo and Kari Immonen. Translated from Finnish by Ilse Winkler
- Das Alexandria der Ostsee. Essay by Johannes Salminen. Translated from Swedish by Elna Lindgens
- Der Ostseeraum - Spannungsfeld im Wandel der Zeiten. Essay by Nils Blomkvist. Translated from English by Susanne Bonn
- Die Ostsee und ihre Mythologie in der polnischen Literatur. Essay by Małgorzata Czermińska. Translated from English by Valeska Henze
- Das Land, das nicht ist. Essay by Sergey Zavyalov. Translated from Russian by Christine Hengevoß
- Hogland - vergessene Insel in der Ostsee. Essay by Barbara Lönnqvist. Translated from English by Yvonne Eglinger
- Blå Jungfrun. Die Blaue Jungfrau. Essay by Lennart Sjögren. Translated from Swedish by Karl-Ludwig Wetzig
- Sofi Oksanens "Fegefeuer" in Estland. Essay by Eneken Laanes. Translated from English by Elvira Willems
- Die Schere von Esther. Essay by Mindaugas Kvietkauskas. Translated from Lithuanian by Vytene Muschick
- Johannes Bobrowskis literarische Landschaft. Essay by Anders Björnsson. Translated from Swedish by Karl-Ludwig Wetzig
- Der knorrige Stamm. Demut als Edelmut in der finnlandschwedischen Literatur. Essay by Clas Zilliacus. Translated from Swedish by Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke
- Die Angst des Kindes in Tomas Tranströmers 'Ostseen'. Essay by Karin Haugane. Translated from Norwegian by Caren Gäbel
- Zu Besuch bei Jurij Dmitrijew. Interview by Sergey Lebedev. Translated from Russian by Franziska Zwerg
- Der Fürst. Über Czesław Miłosz. Essay by Eugenijus Ališanka. Translated from Lithuanian and Polish by Claudia Sinnig
- Kaliningrad. Eine Sekunde der Erleuchtung. Essay by Algirdas Patackas. Translated from Lithuanian by Claudia Sinnig
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