Around the story “The Trumpeter of Samarkand” – promotion of the monograph

On 10 December 2024 a meeting took place with the authors of the monograph “Revisiting The Trumpeter of Samarkand. Between automatic and literary translation of a short story by Ksawery Pruszyński”. The book promotion was organised by the Hieronim Łopaciński Voivodeship Public Library in Lublin and the Lublin University of Technology Publishing House. The meeting in the Library conference room was attended by the co-authors: Jerzy Montusiewicz (Department of Computer Science at the Lublin University of Technology), Rahim Kayumov (employee of the State University of Samarkand – connection via WhatsApp with Uzbekistan) and Jerzy Warakomski (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Lublin University of Technology). The evening had a special setting thanks to the attendance of a 4-member-strong reenactment group from the Independence Foundation, who turned up in the field uniforms of General Władysław Anders’ Army. The meeting began with reading a relevant fragment of the text of the story and playing on the signal bugle the tunes that Ksawery Pruszyński wrote about. The host, Dr Grzegorz Figiel – deputy director for substantive affairs, welcomed over 50 participants of the meeting, including the head of the LUT Publishing House – Dr Karolina Famulska-Ciesielska and the guest of honour – Mrs Maria Pruszyńska-Boni – the daughter of the author of The Trumpeter of Samarkand story. Then the authors of the monograph took the floor. Supported by the prepared presentation, they talked about the genesis of the idea, the method of using automatic translation proofread from a literary viepoint, the associated problems and the quantitative analysis conducted. They also spoke about the content of the book: the description of historical and cultural contexts, the interpenetration of legends related to Poland and Uzbekistan and the prepared dictionaries of concepts, geographical terms and characters appearing in the story. The final result of the three-year work are the texts of the story in Uzbek and Tajik (in Latin and Cyrillic notation) and Russian and English, as well as the text of the monograph. At the end of the speech, Jerzy Warakomski read the beginning of the story in Uzbek. Mrs Maria Pruszyńska-Boni took part in the discussion, drawing attention to the fact that she had never expected that engineers would translate her father’s story into such exotic languages. She did not hide her emotion and gratitude for the preparation of the monograph in question and for the opportunity to participate in the event. The meeting was also accompanied by a photographic exhibition by Prof. Jerzy Montusiewicz, which presented the contents of the book in a synthetic form. At the farewell, the participants of the meeting were given occasional bookmarks, which contained a QR code for free download of the digital version of the monograph in .pdf format from the website of the Centre for Scientific and Technical Information of the Lublin University of Technology. Photographic service from the resources of the Voivodeship Public Library.

 

More information about the meeting can be found at the links: