On the occasion of International Translation Day, the Language Implementation Agency in RNM organized the scientific conference with the theme “The Agency has translated and proofread 100,000 pages so far”. In this organization participated the Vice-Rector for International Relations, Prof. Dr. Salajdin Salihu and the Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Prof. Dr. Berton Sulejmani.
In his welcoming speech, the Vice-Rector for International Relations, Prof. Dr. Salajdin Salihu emphasized that a good translator also knows the language of symbols, the language of dreams, the forgotten language. It dives inside the human being, inside a culture, civilization, history, psychology.
“It gets into invisible and unknown dimensions thanks to his talent and culture. It reveals the treasures that one language hides from another language, that one culture hides from another culture, that one civilization hides from another civilization. For the translator, every language is valuable and the wealth of humanity. Loving your language is not a condition to hate another language. According to Charles Taylor, every nation has the right to believe that its culture and language are valid. Those who are against a language suffer from xenophobia. Xenophobes damage, first of all, their culture” – stated Prof. Dr. Saladin Salihu.
Referring to the Albanian language, he added that our language is the main pillar of identity. “This cultural language has great expressive power. This is proved by the translators, who enriched our cultural system with masterpieces of world art and philosophy. Albanian culture also gave eternal values to other cultural systems. Even with the help of translators.
or translators, language is not only a means of communication, but also of understanding. And if good translators enrich the language, poor and irresponsible translators turn diamonds into carbon. Meanwhile, those who complain that the Albanian language does not allow them to express their thoughts, do not understand that the fault does not lie with the Albanian language, but with those who do not know this language”, emphasized, among other things, the Vice-Rector for International Relations, Prof. Dr. Saladin Salihu.
Meanwhile, the Dean of the Faculty of Philology, Prof. Dr. Berton Sulejmani presented the statement entitled: “The importance of translations of literary works in North Macedonia today”. He emphasized that our society today, unfortunately, does not consider the work of a translator a job. In fact, they often take the courage and say to the translators: Well, what do you do? It is enough to put the foreign word in “google translate” and earn money, or it is enough to say “libër” to the word “book” and vice versa and earn money. But the true translator does not separate night from day. It happens at a time of the day when it sits in a chair, and only after a long time it notices that the next day is dawning. It does not care about the dress or the official uniform. If you wish, you can do the work of the translator in pajamas or even in a shirt. Your employer doesn’t pressure you, and you don’t even need to report to your boss, because you (the translator) only care about getting the job done properly and on time. This is best proven by Fan Noli, who did not put down on paper an event that he lived directly, but what he read already written by Shakespeare. We have creativity on the linguistic level, since Shakespeare did not write “Hamlet”, for example, in the Albanian language, but in English; in the Albanian language it was written by Fan Noli; wich means that it was written in Albanian language by Noli. To illustrate this, we can compare the translator to the sculptor; when it engraves, it usually has a model in front of its eyes, it did not create this model, it will only recreate it, of course in its own way, by artistically appropriating it, in another subject, which will obey its inspiration.
At the end of his speech, the dean of Philology, Prof. Dr. Berton Sulejmani emphasized that the role of Albanian translators has been, is and will be very important, because, especially in the age of technology, they help in the creation of new words, such as: aunt = sister, aunt = sisterhood, toaster (for the “toaster” used to toast bread) etc.
The celebration of the International Translation Day was concluded with discussions about the importance of translation as an intellectual activity that enables communication not only between institutions, but also between the citizens of the RNM.
