By Mitch Belkin | Program Coordinator
These past three months we've been hard at work on Tony Judt's "Ill Fares the Land" and we would like to share with you what we've been up to.
The translation and editing of the Judt book is complete and we are ready to print. The well-known Radio Free Europe journalist Salome Asatiani kindly wrote the introduction to the book. Our gifted editor Tinatin Ninua succeeded in the very difficult task of making Judt's eloquence and metaphors accessible to Georgian readers. She commented: "Even more challenging [than this] was translating the context of the concepts and events less known to the average Georgian reader without jeopardizing the correct portrayal of the author’s spirit. Imagine translating into Georgian terms like the “welfare state” when…the concept itself is not even part of public conversation in Georgia."
Our free SMS system has been fine-tuned and is now fully operation, allowing us to communicate with our active readers regularly. In addition to the numerous messages about getting books to libraries and book stores in distant villages, we regularly receive messages like the following: "It would be great if Radarami could make presentations in Zugdidi [the fifth largest city in Georgia]. I am a big fan of yours and it would be my pleasure to help out!" - Arkadi, Zugdidi (translated from Georgian) On our Facebook page as well, we receive messages like the following: "Can't wait till new book comes out, I have read all 4 Radarami books and loved all of them!" - Tamuna M. (translated from Georgian)
Right now we are hunkering down for a successful launch: getting the word out about Radarami and the Judt book and organizing post-launch book discussions. An interview with our translation coordinator Lika Jamburia was broadcast on the popular Radio Fortuna and we will soon have interviews with Liberali magazine and Tbilisi State University newspaper. We published a very positive book review about Radarami and the Judt book in the newspaper Kviris Palitra. As for book discussions, we are currently organizing them in book publishing house "Siesta", the Heinrich Boell Foundation, Gori State University, Batumi State University, and Kutaisi State University.
As a small token of our appreciation for your support of Radarami, we would like to put your name in the published Tony Judt book as one of our sponsors. If you would prefer that we not do so, please email your name to mitch@radarami.org by Friday, November 30th.
If you have any other questions or comments, please email mitch@radarami.org.
Warm wishes from Tbilisi,
The Radarami Team
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
