“These voices must be heard...”

Claudia Dathe was born in 1971 near Leipzig. She began to study Translation with Eastern European languages in the early 90s, which were defined by turmoil. In the 90s and early 2000s she spent several periods studying and working in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, in order to get to know post-Soviet environments and gather experiences of transformation. In Kyiv, she witnessed the Orange Revolution in 2004/5. The kitchen of her friends in Kyiv, Mark Belorousets und Alla Zamanska became a place of encounter with intellectuals and early dissidents, of insight into the repressive years of the Soviet Union, and of discussions about literature and translation. Claudia Dathe began to learn Ukrainian. Today she is among the most active mediator of Ukrainian literature in Germany. She has translated Evgenia Belorusets, Marianna Kijanowska and Serhij Zhadan, amongst others.

Filmstill: Claudia Dathe

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.