Գալուստ Գյուլբենկյան, Գալուստ Կիւլպէնկեան հիմնադրամ, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Series

ARI Literature Foundation coordinates a major literary project in Armenia – a translation series initiated by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The goal of this initiative is to make fundamental texts in the humanities and social sciences accessible in Armenian, enriching high-quality scholarly resources.

As part of this project, the Foundation also develops translation workshops in Armenia, including workshops for emerging translators, helping to expand the pool of qualified professionals. All these activities foster meaningful cultural exchange in Armenia.

The project further contributes to the modernization of the Armenian language through new terminological vocabularies and supports translation and publishing cooperation programs with local and international partners.

The “Calouste Gulbenkian Translation Series” will focus on texts from the late 20th – 21st century written by outstanding authors in the fields of humanities and social sciences, who have not been translated into Armenian previously. The translations may be in Eastern or Western Armenian, depending on the availability of translators. Through this initiative we aim to make texts available to scholars and students principally in Armenia, with the aim of facilitating the advancement of intellectual discourse. This initiative will also contribute to the modernisation of the Armenian language, incorporating into it new vocabulary, and increase the pool of translators into and out of Armenian.

The following books form the 1st stage of the project were already published:

– Giorgio Agamben, Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L’archivio e il testimone (Homo sacer III), Actual Art, 2020
– Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Ankyunaqar, 2021
– Alain Badiou, Le Siècle, Newmag, 2021
– Michel Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir, Zangak, 2022
– Jean-Francois Lyotard, La condition postmoderne; Instructions Païennes et Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants, The Ashot Johannissyan Research Institute
in the Humanities, 2023
– Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, ARI Literature Foundation, 2023
– Edward Said, Orientalism, Newmag, 2025

The following books will be published by the end 2026:

– Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Newmag, 2026
– Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, Newmag, 2026

The following books from the 2nd series were published:

– Carlo Ginzburg,Il Formaggio e i Vermi, Antares, 2024

By the end 2028 the following books will be published: 

– Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
– John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
– Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present
– Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation
– Jacques Le Goff, La Civilisation de l’Occident Médiéval
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung / Philosophische Untersuchungen
– William James, Pragmatism
– Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism
– Edgar Wind, Art and Anarchy

Committee of Experts

 

An internationally based committee of experts has been established to recommend the texts for translation. The committee members are:

Shushan Avagyan – Literary translator and lecturer, Translation Certificate Program, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, American University of Armenia.

Vardan Azatyan – Associate Professor, Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts; Lecturer, Institute of Contemporary Art, Yerevan; President, The Ashot
Johanissyan Research Institute in the Humanities, Armenia.

Hagop Gulludjian – Lecturer in Armenian Studies, Department of Near Eastern & Cultures, UCLA, USA.

Smbat Hovhannisyan – Lecturer at the Chair of World History, Department of History, Yerevan State University, Armenia.

Armine Ishkanian – Assistant Professor and Programme Director of the MSc in Social Policy and Development, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.

Raymond Kévorkian – Directeur émérite de recherche, Institut Français de Géopolitique, Université Paris VIII, Saint-Denis.

Ardashes Margosyan – Formerly of Aras Yayıncılık Publishing, Istanbul.

Ara Sanjian – Associate Professor in Armenian and Middle Eastern History, Director of the Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan at Dearborn, USA.

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