Image: Ingrid Wenzel
How can we creatively translate audio stories from languages we do not understand? And how can we make works created in "small" or underrepresented languages audible beyond their national borders?
This session explores translation not as a technical exercise, but as a creative and editorial practice. Using case studies from doku drops (Deutschlandfunk Kultur), we will examine experimental approaches to reinterpreting documentary audio across languages, asking what is gained, transformed, or inevitably lost when a piece enters a new linguistic and cultural context.
Bringing together perspectives from Czechia, Moldova, Germany and other countries, we will reflect on the challenges of sharing audio created in languages with limited international reach, and on the responsibility - and freedom - of translating not only words, but atmosphere, rhythm, silence, and meaning.
Through listening, conversation and discussion, we invite participants to rethink what translation can be, and to imagine new ways of making "invisible" languages and audio cultures more accessible. The session concludes with an open conversation about multilingual audio practice and how international collaboration can help broaden the circulation of documentary sound beyond dominant languages.
Martina Pouchlá works as a spoken-word editor at Czech Radio. Her documentaries have received awards, including the Prix Bohemia or Åke Blomström Award and have been nominated for the Prix Europa. She cofounded AudioCafé, a collective listening project at Masaryk University. She´s based in Brno, the Czech republic.
Ingo Kottkamp does, embraces and lives with radio in various constellations: author/ director/ researcher/ curator/ speaker/ listener/ producer and since 2007 commissioning editor for Deutschlandfunk Kultur.
Judith Geffert is a radio documentary maker from Magdeburg, now based in Berlin. In their work, they like to explore the thin lines between journalism, art and academia. They make experimental radio features, narrative storytelling podcasts, radio plays, reportages and short journalistic pieces. They are part of The Ecco, an international community for short form audio storytelling.
Link to doku drops: Jeden Monat neue Kurzdokus - doku drops
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