As you can imagine, the transmedial storytelling around Wiedźmin [The Witcher] combines many of my interests. Therefore, one of my resolutions for 2020 is to contribute to this phenomenon by means of a new translation (from Polish to English). Every month, I shall translate one of the short stories from the collection Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) by Andrzej Sapkowski. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
Every year on September 30, it is the feast of St. Jerome (347–420), a priest, confessor, theologian, historian and: Bible translator. He is even considered to be the first to have translated the Bible from Hebrew to Latin. Therefore, the International Federation of Translators chose this day to be celebrated as International Translation Day.
The first track of my solo album is about the story of Achtamar, which I learned in Armenia. Using the familiar trope of of star-cross’d lovers, the story of Achtamar is about a young woman named Tamar and the young man who loves her. They meet in secret on an island, until Tamar’s father discovers their trysts and sets a trap for the youth. He manages to escape, but he is mortally wounded and cannot swim across the lake. As he dies, his last action is to whisper her name across the water: ‘Ach, Tamar!’. With the help of my friend Ofelia Melikyan, I translated the famous poem by Hovhannes Tumanyan about this story. And with the help of John Vandenberg, I rewrote it into a poem of …