The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Argentine Carlos Dante Riva to Azerbaijan visited the Azerbaijan Translation Centre under the Cabinet of Ministers (AzTC)

After greeting the Argentinian diplomat, AzTC Director Afag Masud focused on the history of the Centre, its activity as well as on growing mutual interest between the two countries in the sphere of culture and literature. “AzTC aims to bring to the world community’s notice the main processes related to public and political life of the country; to organize and promote world literature, culture and science in the country through translations into Azerbaijani and to arrange events to promote Azerbaijani literature and scientific-cultural heritage at the international level,” said Afag Masud. “Up to quite a recent time AzTC was obliged to be satisfied mainly with translation and publication of famous patterns of world literature into Azerbaijani at the highest level. With new status, AzTC started launching wide-range projects in language and translation sphere. Concerning the Argentinian literature, within these years the Translation Centre has translated and published works of popular Argentinian authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Ernesto Sábato, Álvaro Yunque, Roberto Arlt and so on. Among the publications due to be issued this year there is a book “Latin American Novel” to include also works by Argentinian authors”.  

Later on, the Director touched upon the spiritual affinity of the two countries in the field of literature and talked about the great popularity of Argentinian authors among the Azerbaijani readers.

 In turn, Ambassador Carlos Dante Riva thanked the AzTC Director of the Centre for the invitation and shared his thoughts on necessity of establishing close ties between the two nations. “Firstly, I would like to state that within 2-year stay here I feel information deficit between our countries, and it makes itself evident in the fact how less our nations are familiar with each other. This information deficit causes great problems. Moreover, translation activities can bring to rapprochement of our nations. I think that our major purpose is to enlarge literary ties between our countries and to bring to rapprochement in the field of culture and literature. It is natural that the economic, social and political relationships among countries are growing, but none of these factors is equaled to cultural factor in order of importance. It is my belief that culture and literature are the all-important factor in rapprochement of countries and nations. In this respect, it is advisable to translate literary pieces of Azerbaijani authors into Spanish and arrange their publication in Argentine.

International Book Fair is held annually in Buenos-Aires. We would like to see AzTC among the participants of this Book Fair and we are ready to give a hand in all aspects. I am sure the realization of translation process and distribution of literary pieces will give rise to further development of cultural and political relationships between Argentine and Azerbaijan.

I would like to dwell upon two literary pieces, which I consider very important to be translated into Azerbaijani. One of them is a book that is very popular in Azerbaijan, as far as information goes, according to which tango is taught and in which the history of tango is introduced.  The author of the other book is Adolfo Bioy Casares. We hope that the AzTC will give us effectual help in translation of these books at an adequate level,” said the Ambassador.

Later on, the Ambassador shared his thoughts about the translation industry in his country. He said that translators in Argentine initially study at specialized schools on specific profession that they have chosen, later they pass relevant registration and start dealing with translation activities, only then they are recruited. 

In conclusion, the Ambassador expressed his hope for close relationship between the Translation Centre and relevant institutions of Argentine and development of cultural and literary interchange.    

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