TRANSLATORIUM is a non-governmental organization working with translators and for the translation community, and creating a platform for the intersection of different kinds of art. We organize residencies, art projects, and an eponymous festival.

The story of the NGO TRANSLATORIUM started in 2016, when the co-founders of the VERBatsiya translation group (Tania Rodionova, Veronika Yadukha, and Yuliia Didokha) had the idea of organizing the first festival in Ukraine that would focus on translation in its various aspects. Thus, the first TRANSLATORIUM Literary and Translation Festival took place in Khmelnytskyi in 2017 and has been held annually ever since. The festival is dedicated to the International Translation Day and takes place at the end of September or beginning of October.

At first, we were more interested in doing something for our hometown, diversifying its cultural life, and thus supporting the idea of cultural decentralization. Over time, our motivation shifted, and the former reasoning became more of an added value. Instead, we focused on the need to unite the translators’ community, to form a platform for interaction, and to talk about translation in different ways and art forms.

We decided from the beginning that our festival should have its own intimate atmosphere and wanted to make the TRANSLATORIUM experience as pleasant as possible for participants and visitors. We want all our events to be open to the public, so that people can actively participate but also have time for lunch or coffee, or small talk with their colleagues

So there are about 20 events over three days. These are mainly lectures, workshops, artist talks with leading Ukrainian and foreign writers and translators, presentations of new translations, etc. When we talk about translation, we mean not only translation as a profession, but also translation as a way of perceiving the world. That is why every year we include new art forms that also bring their own “languages” that need to be translated. The festival traditionally has an art program, which includes projects at the intersection of music and literature, and also visual and performing arts.

Given the wide range of mediums that we began to work with in the field of translation, we started to organize various side projects alongside the festival. That’s how we realized that we had developed into a fully fledged NGO with regular activities. Our sustainable projects now include residencies as well as art projects. For example, there is the BAZHAN residency, an individual residency for poets and poetry translators in Kamianets-Podilskyi, and “Amadoka in the Language of Contemporary Ensemble Music”, a concert that transforms with each performance and has been performed not only in Ukraine but also abroad.
TRANSLATORIUM NGO is constantly growing and changing, adapting to the needs and challenges of the present, but its focus will always be on translation and the translators’ community of Ukraine.