site.btaKazanlak to Host International Meeting of Translators and Journalists

Kazanlak will host an international meeting of translators and journalists, organized by the local administration and the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), said BTA Director General Kiril Valchev during a meeting with Kazanlak Mayor Galina Stoyanova on Wednesday.

During the meeting, the sides extended a contract for BTA’s local press club for another ten years. The idea for these meetings is of BTA Director General Kiril Valchev. Mayor Stoyanova expressed readiness on behalf of Kazanlak Municipality to be a partner in their organization. The first such meeting will be organized during the Rose Festival next year. 

BTA plans to revive a tradition that has existed over the decades and organize international meetings of foreign translators of Bulgarian literature, Valchev said. He added that the agency had contacted the Union of Translators in Bulgaria and the Ministry of Culture. Valchev noted that in recent years there have been many outstanding authors in Bulgarian literature whose works are translated into foreign languages. “A meeting of the people who are doing it, organized by the Kazanlak Municipality with the partnership of BTA and all the institutions involved in some way, makes a lot of sense,” he said.

Valchev added that these meetings of translators will be accompanied by visits of journalists from the national news agencies of the respective countries. He said that BTA is partnering with 50 national agencies and that the agency also has experience in organizing such initiatives. During the World Meeting of Bulgarian Media in Kazanlak in 2023, representatives of about 20 national agencies came and later spread the word not only about the meeting but also about the Rose Festival. 

According to Kiril Valchev, a meeting of translators and journalists is a very good combination, and the most natural place for it is Kazanlak, which hosted such forums decades ago.

Kiril Valchev and Galina Stoyanova discussed other joint initiatives of BTA and the Kazanlak Municipality. Among them is a local conference under a project of BTA and the European Commission, entitled "Europe on the Balkans. Cohesion Skill”, which will take place in Kazanlak on June 4. Stoyanova said that this year's Rose Festival in Kazanlak will be held under the auspices of the Italian Embassy and the twinning of Kazanlak with the Italian city of Cremona. Another international festival of string musical instruments will also be held here, as well as world exhibitions of Italian artists. “I believe that the BTA forum on June 4 will be just the beginning of international of a host of events in Kazanlak in the same month,” she said and expressed readiness for more future joint initiatives and good partnership.