Presentation

When presenting this issue, first and foremost we would like to express our sadness with the passing away of Lino Akesolo and Inazio Berasategi. The former became an honorary member of the EIZIE association last year, and the latter was one of the founders of the association, as well as a member of the editorial team and a strong supporter of this magazine. In honour and memory of both, the first lines of this issue will be devoted to them, and we would like to dedicate the whole issue to them, humble as it may be.

Furthermore, returning to the topics we’ve left in the readers’ hands, on the occasion of the writer and translator Joxe Austin Arrieta being awarded the 1991 Euskadi Translation Prize, we publish an interview with him, which gives us an opportunity to get to know both his own translation work and the situation of Basque translation in general.

The reflection on translation carries on with an article by Xabier Mendiguren on the translating tradition in Germany. It will be very useful indeed for Basque translators to know about the progress made by Germans in this field, and to draw conclusions by comparing and by being informed of their experience.

The following major articles are basically written with the same intention: the first is dedicated to Captain Duvoisin, a great Bascophile and translator, on the occasion of the first centenary of his death; and the second, stepping down to a more pragmatic level, offers comments on specific difficulties when translating from Czech into Basque. Since one of the aims of this magazine is to reflect on what we have seen and learned from our work and then offer our reflections to the rest of our colleagues, we find it interesting to publish the works that reflect this experience. After all, practice itself is the best teacher.

In the «Puntuz puntu» section we have first of all two manifestos: the first one, by a writer from the Mansi country, depicting the situation of «small» –or «lesser used» (as it is fashionable now)- languages; and the second has been issued by the Translators’ International Association and sent to Arts Ministers from all over the world, as a statement in favour of translation.

There are also two old Basque texts, both closely related to translation and providing translators with a lot of data worth knowing. And, as a sort of penance, as an example of the decision to correct past failures for the future and as a mirror of the errors and misprints which –much to our disgust- are the translator’s travelling companion, comes the confession of the small and big errors finding their way into several issues of this magazine, a clear proof that we have to be on our toes when correcting our texts.

The magazine concludes with the usual sections, i. e. news items related to translation, information about different magazines and comments on bibliography.