The Project

IVAN SHISHMANOV VIRTUAL LIBRARY

Bulgarian literature in translation

Financing institution: BULGARIAN SCIENCE FUND, MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, YOUTH AND SCIENCE, Bulgaria

Host organisation: INSTITUTE OF LITERATURE, BULGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE

Duration of the project: December 2012 – December 2014

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

The project entails large-scale research activities, among them bibliographic and textual research, the results of which are applied in the construction of a new digital library collection meant for a wide reading public outside Bulgaria. The library is a hypertext type of network and supports:

• internal links between the different translations of the same author or the same text in its different language versions and/ or in various books that contain it;
• external links with our envisaged partner network, with a number of Bulgarian and European institutions in the sphere of intercultural communication, with key library collections, with publishing houses and circulation networks, with specialised academic networks, etc.

The Ivan Shishmanov virtual library port provides:

• the opportunity to read the works of classical and contemporary Bulgarian authors in their English or German translations;
• biographical entries for the authors included in the database in German and in English;
• bibliographical reference on the existing publications of each author’s translated works, on the variety of translations of a single text, and on the libraries where the editions are to be found;
• electronic books and anthologies organised thematically, poetically and/ or historiographically, put together within the framework of the library collection;
• information about newly published or forthcoming editions of translations of Bulgarian literature.

Within the duration of the project the library collection will be filled with translations into two languages: English and German. A follow-up phase, outside the framework of the current project, would expand the language diversity of the library collection with translations into French, Spanish, Russian, Czech, etc.

OBJECTIVES

1. The project aims at creating a contemporary and effective instrument that is to provide an easy but also worthwhile access to Bulgarian literature. There already exists an impressive amount of translations with serious intellectual capital and some considerable financial investment behind it, which, however, remains largely passive, mostly inaccessible and ultimately ineffective. With the current project these existing translations are meant to come to “the limelight” and become part of the contemporary mechanisms of intercultural communication.
2. One of the direct goals of this project is to assist the academic discourse in teaching Bulgarian studies, Slavic studies, Culture studies, etc. The Ivan Shishmanov library collection will have a crucial role in fostering distant learning as a form of teaching in these majors. For a range of humanitarian disciplines dealing with the cultural area of South-Eastern Europe, the translations of Bulgarian literature will provide additional scope for research.
3. The virtual library will offer a forum for authors, translators, publishers, literary critics, academics and readers. In addition, it aims at provoking the interest of young people abroad towards the classical and the most contemporary texts of Bulgarian literature; the goal is the initiation of a lasting reading public with their own competences and needs in terms of Bulgarian culture.