On April 14, undergraduate and graduate students, together with their lecturers, met Dmytro Shcherbyna, PhD in Philology and lecturer at the Department of Translation and Slavic Philology of Kryvyi Rih State Pedagogical University. The guest spoke about his creative path, his professional development as a translator and editor, as well as the challenges faced by contemporary literary translation.

The most striking impression on the participants was his work on the translation of the adventure novel The Boiling River by Ruso Andres. The translator provided a detailed account of the translation process, highlighting the difficulties encountered. In particular, the challenge lay in rendering the realities of Indigenous life, which were unfamiliar and required additional research. This included the names of musical instruments, items of clothing, and words reflecting local color lacked direct equivalents in dictionaries. To preserve the authenticity of the text, the translator used Spanish as an intermediary language for retransmitting names, consulted various dictionaries and sources that offered insights into the phonetics and specific pronunciation of Indigenous words. An important stage of the work involved communication with the author of the novel to clarify specific aspects and other details requiring explanation.

During the meeting, Mr. Shcherbyna also shared his experience of translating The Jungle Book by R. Kipling, Dracula by B. Stoker, and Treasure Island by R. L. Stevenson and so on.

The event proved to be an important educational and cultural experience for both students and faculty. Mr. Shcherbyna demonstrated that literary translation is not only a linguistic exercise but also a profound immersion into the cultural context and a precise understanding of the author’s worldview.

Faculty of Social and Humanitarian Sciences