This Thursday 3rd of October (13:00-17:00, Tiedekulma Fönster) a literary event organized by the Department of Languages in the University of Helsinki will be celebrated. The event deals with writing, translating and publishing literature among the Basque, Catalan, Galego, Spanish and Finnish languages. Well-known professionals such as Bea Chivite (Basque poet), Alba Dedeu (Catalan writer), Eider Rodríguez (Basque writer), Mònica Batet (representation of Nits Blanques, Finnish-Catalan publishing house), Mattia Retta (representation of Mediterraneus, Finnish-Galego publishing house) and Luisa Gutiérrez (member of the Finnish Institute in Madrid and Finnish-Spanish translator) will talk about their professional paths.
The University of Helsinki is unique internationally for its wide offer of language subjects at the BA level. The Department of Languages hosts research and teaching of not only the global languages of Spanish and Portuguese with hundreds of millions of speakers, but also other languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, such as Catalan, Basque and Galician. We often think of these languages as small languages, but in fact, they have millions of speakers (around 10 million speakers of Catalan, 750.000 of Basque and 3 million of Galego). Such diverse language offer is thanks to the cooperation with the language institutes of the autonomous areas of Spain (Institut Ramon Llull in Catalunya, Instituto Etxepare in the Basque Country, and Xunta de Galicia in Galicia). In fact, the first two have also collaborated in the event, along with the University of Helsinki and the Spanish Embassy of Finland.
Everyone interested in the topic is very welcome to attend. The participants will talk about their work in different languages (Catalan, Galego, Spanish) and the discussions will be accompanied by some original readings and the possibility to check published books. Comments and questions can be done in the languages used during the event and also in English.
For further information, please contact Aina Bonet, aina.bonet@helsinki.fi (Catalan lecturer) and Nerea Mandiola, nerea.mandiola@helsinki.fi (Basque lecturer).