Dhaka: 18 South Asian languages, 48 poets, two continents — within the framework of the project ‘Poets Translating Poets - VERSschmuggel Südasien’ German speaking lyricists encounter fellow poets from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In joint workshops they translate their works to the respective other language. This poetic exchange has been initiated by Goethe-Institut in cooperation with Literaturwerkstatt Berlin.

In Dhaka, renowned Bangladeshi poets Shahnaz Munni and Sajjad Sharif met German poet Hendrik Jackson in a week-long session in early September 2015 with the support of two interlinear translators.

During a public presentation programme on 10 September at Goethe-Institut at 7:00pm in Dhaka, the three poets will talk about their experiences translating each other’s work and recite some of their selected poems both in German and Bengali language.

Since the poets don’t speak each other’s languages, so the role of the interlinear translators was crucial for this project. In Dhaka, the tasks of interlinear translator were meticulously done by Sarfuddin Ahmed and Partha Chattopadhyay from Goethe-Institut Dhaka and Kolkata respectively.