On December 4-6, 2014 the St. Grigol Peradze XII International Conference of Caucasian studies was held at the University of Warsaw. The conference was dedicated to the 825-year anniversary of Shota Rustaveli's creative work. Such conferences are held in Warsaw every other year and are organised by Professor David Kolbaia of Warsaw University. The main goal of the conference was to promote the role of Georgian culture and history in the process of the development of the world civilization, as well as the promotion of Georgian cultural heritage, religious and philosophical values.

This year the conference was, for the first time, held under the patronage of Georgian and Polish presidents this year. The Caucasian session was opened by the Georgian President.

At the conference the following scholars were awarded Grigol Peradze awards for their contributions to the advancement of Georgian and Polish science: to Ian Brown, for his translation of the Man in the Panther Skin into Polish, Polish scholar Voitsex Materski, Archimandrite Adam Akhaladze (From the Georgian Patriarchy).

The international conference was attended by Polish and Georgian scientists, professors and teachers, students, politicians and Georgians living in Poland. Before the start of the conference the Georgian president and public honoured the memory of the Professors and teachers who fell in the World War II and decorated the plateau in the yard of the University, with the name of Peradze, amongst others.

The themes of the symposium were arranged as follows:
 Shota Rustaveli - a poet and a humanist;
 Rustaveli and his epoch - the era of the Georgian renaissance in the 12th–13th centuries;
 The Religion of Shota Rustaveli;
 The place of Shota Rustaveli in European and world literature: translations, critique;

Working languages of the conference were Polish, English and French.

Leading professors and scholars from a number of countries delivered interesting papers. Specifically, papers delivered by French Kartvelologist Bernard Outtier’s paper “What Does the Georgian Fragments from the Time of Rustaveli Teach Us?”, a joint paper delivered by Elguja Khintibidze, TSU Professor and a researcher of the same university Tamta Grigolia - A Great Novelty in Rustaveli Studies – The Man in the Panther Skin as a Plot Source of XVII Century English Dramaturgy”; by Irine Chachnidze (Akaki Tsereteli Kutaisi State Universitty) - “Language Policy in Rustaveli’s Epoch: Reform of the Georgian Literary Language”; by Eka Vardoshvili (TSU) - “Société Asiatique” in Paris and The Knight in the Panther’s skin by Shota Rustaveli; Nino Doborjginidze and Irina Lobjanidze (Ilia State University, Tbilisi) – “Corpus of the Knight in the Panther’s Skin”.

Each paper was followed by a brief discussion.

It is worth noting that ancient manuscripts, editions and illustrations of the Man in the Panther Skin were exhibited simultaneously with the conference.

The materials presented at the conference were published in the journal of Oriental studies of Warsaw University „Pro- Georgica“, N25.

Khatia Mikaberidze

The New Translation of The Knight in the Panther Skin

On 13th of October 2015 Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University warmly welcomed Lyn Coffin, a new translator of The Knight in the Panther Skin from Georgian into English. The American poet, playwright and translator published the fifth English translation of The Knight in the Panther Skin in September 2015. The new translation was prepared by the publishing house “Poezia”. Ms. Coffin started to work on the translation of the poem in 2012 together with Professor Dodona Kiziria, who made a word for word translation of the poem. This translation was based on two editions: one, prepared by the Commission for stating the text of MPS and published in 1965 and the other, the school edition by Prof. Nodar Natadze.

At the presentation of the book Lyn Coffin was introduced to the public by Prof. Darejan Tvaltvadze, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, at Tbilisi State University, who thanked the translators for the new English translation of the greatest Georgian poem. Academician Elguja Khintibidze, Head of the Chair of Old Georgian Literature of Tbilisi State University in his welcome speech addressed the translator and noted that this translation is valuable because it is a fact that it was published recently in the 21th Century whereas previous translations were published in the 20th century. Professor Khintibidze also talked about a different textual form from the previous translations and paid attention to the metre and rhythm employed by Rustaveli and added that the fact that the translator is a famous American poet, the author of many translations from Russian, Czech etc., is encouraging. Professor Iness Merabishvili an internationally acknowledged scholar and translator from Georgian into English and vice versa, Head of the Byron Society in Georgia also made a speech of welcome to Lyn Coffin. She emphasized the value of the new translation and paid attention to some of the difficulties of transposition of several key moments from the source language to the target language. Khatia Mikaberidze, a TSU PhD student, who is interested in the poem’s translations and is also involved in its literary analysis, also welcomed the honoured guest.

The translator addressed the audience as well and she talked about how the process of the translation had started. She has also translated and published other works from Georgian, namely The Anthology of Georgian poetry which was published in the USA (editor Professor Dodona Kisiria).

This anthology included 19th century Georgian poetry. In addition, Lyn Coffin has translated works by modern Georgian poets: Dato Barbakadze, Giorgi Kekelidze, Givi Alkhazishvili and Zaza Abzianidze. The Georgian translations of her own poetry made by Gia Jokhadze were published in 2012 in Tbilisi. Lyn Coffin also discussed the advantages of her translation of the MPS compared with the others. She believed that the 16 syllable stanzas, the translation’s rhythm and musical characteristics, makes it unique among the other 4 translations of the MPS. As well as this, she also mentioned that the word for word translation was made by Professor Dodona Kiziria. The translator also added that she was often asked how she could have embarked on the translation of such a difficult work especially when she did not even know much about the plot. Her own answer to this question sounded very original: she argues that Rustaveli did not know what would happen in the end of the story either. About the manner of her translating, when she started translating the story she did not know how it would end and the word by word translation was made by Professor Dodona Kiziria. At the end of the meeting, the American translator read some stanzas from the new translation of the MPS.

Translation of The Knight in the Panther Skin into other languages and especially into English is very important from the point of view of its promotion all over the world especially if and when it is made by an experienced professional.

I hope this new translation will make many people interested in the poem. Every new translation is a new way to the original text. Nowadays, sadly there are not many ways leading to the Knight in the Panther Skin. Our aim is to create many more translations, to refine the style and technique and comply them with the ruled of the modern theory of translations.

Scholars are in agreement that there is no ideal translation. Translation cannot mirror the original text, but there are good translations which meet the demands of the translation theory. Only by hard work, taking a great interest in the original text and relying on the accumulated experience will we be able to achieve if not an ideal, but quite “close to the ideal” translations.

The new translation of the MPS by Lyn Coffin assists the popularisation of the Georgian culture and if only for this, it deserved our special attention. As for its closeness to the original text, the transformation of the content, context, images and implications in the translation this is a matter of time and future studies.