Main photo credit: British Council Asset Bank.
Moffat Book Events exists to promote the advancement of the arts, heritage, culture and science of and for Moffat and its district areas by staging creative book events, presenting leading authors and organising conferences.
Last year, British Council Scotland supported the TranslationTransformed Conference (20-22 September 2013), an international translation event, promoting literary links between Russia and Scotland. We contributed to the success of the conference by helping bring qualified Russian-English translators to Moffat.
The delegation included Evgeny Reznichenko, Director of the Institute of Translation in Moscow, Dr Ekaterina Genieva, Director of the Library for Foreign Literature Moscow, and the Directors of four Russian ‘literary museums’.
The British speakers and contributors included Robyn Marsak of the Scottish Poetry Library, Dr Peter France, formerly of Edinburgh University, Dr Oliver Ready, Research Fellow of St Anthony’s College Oxford and Director of Russkiy Mir programme, and Alan Riach, Professor of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow.
The conference was opened by Cabinet Secretary of State for Culture and External Affairs Fiona Hyslop MSP.
This will be followed by a second conference, Lermontov 200, on 3-5 October 2014, to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of the Russian novelist and poet Lermontov, whose Learmont ancestors came from Scotland.