“…the journey itself is the destination”
Film series Translating. Work and Days
Übersetzen. Werke und Tage: Thomas Weiler
Thomas Weiler, born in 1978 in the Black Forest, understands himself as someone who likes discovering small niches. His interest in the Slavic world led him not to Moscow, but to Belarus. In Minsk he volunteered with disabled people, learned Russian through Russian rock music and experimented as a translator, working on the Soviet children’s classic “Crocodile Gena and his friends”. Thomas liked the puzzling it required. The well-known German translator Swetlana Geier encouraged him to get involved with the adventure of translation. He went to Leipzig, studied translation, and discovered the Belarusian language and its literature. Today, Thomas translates from Belarusian, Polish and Russian. His repertoire extends from children’s literature across poetry to contemporary novels. Thomas understands the mediation of Belarusian literature as his mission. He has translated Alhierd Bacharevič, Viktor Martinowitsch, Ziemowit Szczerek and many others.
The series Translating. Work and Days portrays ten translators of different generations who talk about their lives and their work. All of them translate into German from Slavic languages. In the 9 films, Ganna-Maria Braungardt, Claudia Dathe, Christiane Körner, Gabriele Leupold, Aljonna Möckel, Thomas Reschke, Rosemarie Tietze, Thomas Weiler, as well as the duo Günter Hirt & Sascha Wonders alias Sabine Hänsgen and Georg Witte, all speak to us. Their accounts of origins, encounters, discoveries, and experiences are set against the backdrop of photographic documents. Personal histories are told against the background of greater history. The series was in the process of being made when Russia began its large scale invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022. Thus the last intermediate chapter in the films came into being: The War.