RECOVERING FREEDOM

ended

In today’s Europe, where people’s basic freedoms are being threatened, books have remained an accessible platform that offers solace, shared values and common ground. The translation project aims to help people recover their freedoms, and think ahead to a larger, better reality. The selected group of diverse contemporary and classic European writers all create different and diverse paths to freedom, which is the central theme of the project: freedom for women, freedom of the environment and of (physical) space (overcoming national borders). The project includes 29 European literary works from 10 different languages, 7 of these lesser-used; all works except one are to be translated for the first time. They encompass various literary genres and target different age-groups, from children to adults. While they cover a range of issues, several of them deal with two topics in focus, i.e. gender equality and environment protection. The latter will also be achieved through switching to FSC-certified paper, implementing a new online site for digital promotion, and developing the first audiobooks (as well as e-books) as an alternative to printed format. Through new promotional approaches, cooperations with new partners outside the publishing as well as outside the cultural sector, the project aims to bring the works to new audiences, and raise the profile of the books’ authors, translators and illustrators (as a reference also to foreign publishers). Emphasis is given to the five literary works translated into German (4) and Italian (1) as Slovenia will be the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt and Bologna Book Fairs in 2023 and 2024 respectively. New cooperation with foreign publishers to disseminate, distribute and co-promote the works in their target countries will reach the widest possible public. By promoting these works at several locations in German- and Italian-speaking environments, we will foster and ensure continued interest in Slovenian literature abroad.