Regions, go ahead! Interregional schools of translation as a working mechanism of strengthening the profession of a translator

Abstract

Until recently, insufficient attention was paid to improving the skills of translators in the regions, as it has been concentrated in large cities of the country. This shortage is especially felt in the field of literary and popular scientific translation, despite the special place and rich traditions of literary translation in Russia. The article describes the goals, ideology and strategy of organizing interregional translation schools, their possible varieties and the place the Russian language plays in their implementation. A special emphasis is placed on the literary editing training, which is a part of the proposed translation schools, where trainees acquire the skill of working with the Russian language of translated texts. The project was tested in 2023 in three regions of Russia (Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkaria; Kazan-Sviyazhsk, Tatarstan; Vladivostok, FEFU), and the article describes the experience in detail. The author demonstrates that the project Peredelkino Residential Schools has successfully completed the pilot stage and showed the great potential for development. Noteworthy that the project involves not only immediate participants, but also those who attended open lectures, public readings, presentations in the book clubs. The Russian language served as a main means of communication in any educational format. This way knowledge and skills of the metropolitan masters are transferred to the regions as well as become models for the translation from the ethnic languages of Russia into Russian. These initiatives slowly but surely make the literary translation in Russia take off.