About us

The project Translators’ Portraits was launched in 2016 under the framework of the 1st Festival of Translation of the 13th Thessaloniki International Book Fair (TIBF), on the initiative of Anthi Widenmeier, Associate Professor of Translation Theory and Practice at the Department of German Language and Literature of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). The aim of the project from the outset was to promote the translation profession, translators and translation itself. The project was carried out for four consecutive years, up to the 4th Translation Festival of the 16th TIF in 2019. It continued in 2021 in the context of the 18th TIF and in 2023 in the context of the 19th TIF and is expected to continue.

From its beginning until today the project is coordinated by Anthi Wiedenmeyer, ass. Professor of Theory and Practice of Literary Translation and Interpreting, Despina Lamprou, Dr in Translation Teaching, and Fotini Patinari, PhD candidate in Literary Translation. The subtitles of the interviews are created by Stavroula Tsiara, PhD candidate in Subtitling. The project is implemented with the contribution of students from the School of German Language and Literature of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and, from 2018 onwards, from the School of Cinema of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

The objective of the project is to conduct video interviews with translators working in the translation of prose, poetry, children's literature, theatrical plays and comics, as well as subtitling and supertitling. The interviews bring to the fore the translators' journey and work in the field of translation and present their views on the challenges of the profession, the publishing industry, editing and translation criticism.

The interviews are accompanied by a transcription, a biography and a bibliography, as well as a glossary explaining terms that appear in the interviews, mainly on issues related to literary translation in the Greek-speaking world. The material of the website is offered for scientific research and has already been used as a corpus for the preparation of a master's and a bachelor's thesis (Gavouneli 2019 and Patinari 2018).