Reinventing Calvino: a talk with his translators

Oana Boşca-Mălin is Deputy Director and Coordinator of Cultural Programmes at the Romanian Academy in Rome and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Bucharest. Among the Italian authors translated: P.P. Pasolini, Italo Calvino, Sandro Veronesi, Grazia Deledda, Erri De Luca.

Toma Gudelyte is a freelance translator, publicist and PhD in humanities. In 2015, she received the Dominykas Urbas Prize for the Lithuanian translation of Gerico 1941. Storie di ghetto e dintorni by Igor Argamante. Her translations from Italian include: Italo Calvino, Tutte le cosmicomiche (2022), Marcovaldo (2021); Gianrico Carofiglio, Le tre del mattino (2022); Curzio Malaparte, La pelle (2021); Umberto Galimberti, Perché? 100 storie di filosofi per ragazzi curiosi (2020); Ascanio Celestini, Storie di uno scemo di guerra (2019); Davide Calì, Il venditore di felicità (2020).

Gašper Malej is a Slovenian poet with three books of poetry to his name: Otok, slutnje, poljub (Island, Premonitions, a Kiss; 2004), Rezi v zlatem (Slashes in Gold; 2009), and Pod tisto celino (Underneath that Continent; 2017; Italian translation to be published in April 2023 by Ronzani Editore). A prolific translator of Italian literature (Svevo, Pasolini, Calvino, Campana, Tabucchi, Fo, Buzzati, Tondelli, Pavese, Marinetti, Zanzotto, Loi, Cappello, Barba, Buffoni, Berardi Bifo, Passerini among others), he is one of the most notable Slovenian literary translators of his generation; his work comprises 33 translated books, several theatre scripts, and more than 200 other publications. His translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s novel Petrolio won him the Golden Bird Award in 2011. In 2016, he received the National Translation Prize awarded by the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism for his body of work in translation. He is the executive editor at KUD AAC Zrakogled, a dynamic non-profit cultural association, which publishes “Helia” series, dedicated to translation of fiction books of contemporary Mediterranean authors. He has participated in several international literary festivals, tours, meetings, and translation workshops, also undertaking several literary residencies. 

Martin McLaughlin has a background in Classics and Italian literature, with degrees from Glasgow and Oxford Universities. He was Lecturer in Italian at Edinburgh University (1977-90) before moving to Oxford, where he was University Lecturer in Italian and Student (ie Fellow) of Christ Church (1990-2001), then Agnelli Serena Professor of Italian and Fellow of Magdalen College (2001-17), where he is now Emeritus Fellow. His major publications include Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1995), Italo Calvino (Edinburgh University Press, 1998), and Leon Battista Alberti. La vita, l’umanesimo, le opere letterarie (Olschki, 2016). He was awarded the British Academy Serena Medal in 2017. 

Neva Micheva is a free lance literary translator and cultural journalist from Bulgaria with MA in Italian Philology and MA in Journalism. Among her translations from Italian, Spanish and Catalan (on many of which she has happily worked in Ventspils) are Italo Calvino's If on a Winter Night a Traveller" and Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Dino Buzzati's Sessanta racconti and Il colombre, Roberto Bolaño's Llamadas telefónicas and Putas asesinas, Antonio Tabucchi's Sostiene Pereira, Manuel Puig's The Kiss of the Spider Woman, all of Jordi Galceran's plays. For her versions of Giorgio Manganelli's Centuria and Juan Gelman's Los poemas de Sidney West in 2014 she was awarded Hristo G. Danov national literary prize in the category of Translation. 

Martin Rueff teaches 18th century literature and comparative literature at the University of Geneva. Poet, critic, and translator, he is editor-in-chief of the magazine «Po&sie» founded by Michel Deguy. He has translated authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Carlo Ginzburg, Andrea Zanzotto, Luciano Cecchinel, Eugenio de Signoribus and Guido Mazzoni. He translated the complete work of Italo Calvino for Gallimard. He has published several books of poetry in French, including Icare crie dans un ciel de craie (2008 and 2010) and La Jonction (Nous, 2019). Verticale Ponte (Bologna, Modoinfoshop, 2021) is his first collection of Italian poems. 

Julijana Vučo is Full professor at University of Belgrade, Serbia and University of Donja Gorica, Podgorica, Montenegro. She is the author of numerous scientific papers and monographs on applied and educational linguistics and is one of the founders of institutionalized Italian language teaching in Serbia and Montenegro. She is an expert of the Ministry of Education and Science of Serbia on foreign language issues, as well as the author of bilingual teaching in Serbia and member of the Board for Education of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, domestic and international scientific associations. She has translated authors such as Calvino, Pirandello, Pavese, Tabucchi, Malerba, Parisi, Castellaneta, Gnisci, Remondino, Garin, Ferroni, Procacci, Celestini and earned the academic award of International Society of Applied Linguistics (AILA). She was made Cavaliere all’Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana. 

Wei Yi , Ph.D. in Italian Studies at La Sapienza University of Rome and Associate professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, also a member of the Association for the Study of Italian Literature and overseas jury member of the Strega Prize. She has translated novels by Umberto Eco (Numero zero), a number of works by Italo Calvino (Una pietra sopra, Sotto il sole giaguaro, Favole italiane) , Aberto Moravia (L'automa), Alessandro Baricco (Tre volte all'alba), Paolo Giordano (Il corpo umano, Il nero e l'argento, Nel contagio). In 2019, she won the National Translation Prize of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. She has also published articles on Italian literature in "Guangming Daily," "Art News" and "Chinese Writers. Network." In addition, she has served as an interpreter in meetings and various cultural and artistic events in collaboration with the Italian Embassy and the Italian Film Industry Association (ANICA). Since September 2022, she has been the director of the Confucius Institute at La Sapienza University of Rome.