Winners of “Italo Calvino” award in Iran announced

By Alireza Bahrami

TEHRAN: Everywhere in the world, the prosperity of the English language is ordinary. Following it, we can mention French and German. Chinese language and Arabic language have flourished in universities.

But in the last 20 years, two other languages have become popular among Iranian teenagers: Italian and Korean.

Korean movies and Italian school activities have been effective in this regard.

Also, Italian ambassadors and cultural advisors in Iran have been very fluent in Persian language in the past few years. They organize many cultural and artistic events in Iran. The most recent of them was the “Italo Calvino” award.

The Iranian winners of the translation award, which was held on the occasion of the centenary of “Italo Calvino”, were introduced during a ceremony at the Italian embassy in Tehran; All the winners and participants of this award were from Iranian colleges and universities.

The “Italo Calvino” translation award was one of the series of programs of the Italian language week in the world, held this year with a focus on the most famous and best-selling Italian author (Calvino) around the world.

“This competition once again showed that Italo Calvino is very popular among Iranian youth and students. As far as we can say, his books have been very effective on the community of Italian language learners in Iran,” Giuseppe Perrone, the Italian ambassador in Tehran, said at the ceremony celebrating the winners of the award.

Yara Romanova, Italy’s cultural advisor in Tehran, in a speech referring to the characteristics and coordinates of the translations of the participants of this award, said that the selected translations would be published in a book by one of Iran’s publishing houses.

The Iranian winners of “Italo Calvino” award were introduced as follows:

The winners of the 2,500 Euro prize for the translation of Calvino’s untranslated fictional works into Persian: Hadis Tavakilian, Elnaz Owji, Mehrnoosh Jooshesh and Fatemeh Moghadsi, all from Azad University.

The winner of the research section on the reception of Italo Calvino’s writings in Iran: Nasim Mohammadi from the Italian language school in Iran

The winners of the study section on translations of Calvino’s works in Persian language: Ghazal Heydari and Reyhaneh Timuri, both from the University of Tehran.

The final part of this event featured a specialized panel with the presence of Rosalia Gambatesa (Italian language teacher) and Haleh Nazemi and Mozhgan Mehregan (translators of Italian books into Persian).

An exhibition of photos related to Italo Calvino’s trip to Iran in the 70s was also held on the sidelines of this ceremony.