Institutions

University of Ljubljana (Facuty of Arts, Department of Translation)

The University of Ljubljana, founded in 1919, has a rich academic tradition and is quite large. It is among the largest universities in the world because it has more than 63,000 undergraduate and graduate students and employs approximately 4,000 instructors at twenty-two faculties and three art academies.

The Faculty of Arts was one of the four founding faculties of the newly established university in 1919 and is its largest member institution. It has 22 departments and is Slovenia’s largest and most prominent teaching and research institution in the humanities and social sciences.

After three years of preparation as part of the international TEMPUS project, the Department of Translation became active in the 1997/98 academic year. In 2004 the department became a member of CIUTI. Apart from Charles University in Prague, the department is the only institution in Central and Eastern Europe which meets the required standards. In 2005 the department became a member of EMCI. In 2010 the master’s program in translation was awarded the EMT quality label. In 2011, the University of Ljubljana signed a joint degree cooperation contract with the University of Graz. Throughout the years, the department has established a network of connections between the Slovene Association of Literary Translators (where students can present their literary translations), the Slovene Book Agency (which enables publications), the Goethe Institute, the Austrian Kulturforum and the German and Austrian embassies, and it has held literary events where students can meet well-known German and Austrian writers. The professors of the department remain connected with former students who are interested in literature and they help them find publishers and scholarships.

University of Ljubljana

Faculty of Arts der Universität Ljubljana

Department of Translation

Project Staff

Dr. Tanja Žigon 

Graduated in German Language and Literature and History. From 1998 to 2004 she worked and published as a freelance researcher. In 2004 and 2007 she conducted research within various projects and scholarships in Udine, Vienna and Munich. In 2008 she received a doctorate in Literary Studies. Since 2003 she has been employed at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and is an assistant professor of Translation Studies. Since 2013 she has headed the research program Intercultural Literary Studies, financed by the Slovene Research Agency. She is a member of the consortium of the TransStar EU project, and she is the coordinator of the Slovene part of the project. Her research focuses on German-Slovene relations and interactions and on culture-oriented aspects of Translation Studies. Tanja Žigon is the author of numerous research articles and two books that deal with German-Slovene cultural contacts and connections between nineteenth-century newspapers and literary publications in Carniola. She translates from German into Slovene, especially historical texts and archival sources.

Contact: tanja.zigon@ff.uni-lj.si

Amalija Maček

From 1995 to 2001, after graduating in German Language and Literary Studies and Hispanic Studies, she worked as a freelance translator and interpreter. As a student and an alumna, she pursued further education (through various scholarships: DAAD, Schritte, Sommerakademie LCB, etc.) in Germany, Austria and in Spain. Since 2001 she has worked at the Department of Translation at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Arts, where she mainly teaches translation from German into Slovene. She has published numerous scholarly and newspaper articles and reviews. Since 2008 she heads the master’s program in Interpreting Studies (a member of EMCI). She coordinated the EULITA and TRAFUT projects for Slovenia and is also an accredited conference interpreter, works for EU institutions, is a member of the Slovene Book Agency’s committee for the promotion of Slovene literature abroad and, first and foremost, is a literary translator from German into Slovene (Mora, Brecht, Kafka, Winkler, Pollack, Peltzer, Muschg, Kehlmann, Aichinger, etc.).

Contact: amalija.macek@gmail.com