Ambassador Fiodor Angheli translates poems by Grigore Vieru into Gagauzian

A volume of poems by Grigore Vieru translated into Gagauzian will come out soon. The 50 poems were translated by Ambassador Fiodor Angheli for children from Gagauz settlements. The book in two languages will be named “Mother, you are ...” in Romania, or “Mamu, sän...” in Gagauzian. Fiodor Angheli told Info-Prim Neo that he worked on the translation for a year and hopes the volume in 2,000 copies will appear by February 14, when Grigore Vieru would have turned 75. “I still need pictures of the poet to insert them in the book. I will try to come to an understanding with the Vieru family,“ the Ambassador said. Though most of Grigore Vieru’s poems selected for this volume are in blank verse, in Gagauzian they are in rhyme. “The Gagauz people, and not only they but all the ethnic groups in Moldova, must know the work of Grigore Vieru. The peoples must establish a cultural dialogue,” Fiodor Angheli said. He started to promote Vieru’s work in the 1970s, when he was a correspondent in Bucharest. At that time, when no Moldovan writer could get to Bucharest, a number of the journal of culture “Aurora” contained two pages of poems of the late bard. “Then I decided that the poet’s poems deserve being translated into other languages, including Gagauzian,” the Ambassador said. Fiodor Angheli has translated several books into Gagauzian. They include “Masallar” (“Tales”), which contains five tales by A. S. Pushkin, and “Çoban yildizi-çulpan” (“The Shepherd’s Star”) - the translation of “Luceafarul” poem by Mihai Eminescu. Angheli also said that when the book with Grigore Vieru’s poems comes out, he will start translating ‘tablets’ by Tudor Arghezi. Born on October 24, 1935 in Gaidar village of Ceadar-Lunga district, Fiodor Angheli graduated from the Institute of Asian and African States of “M. Lomonosov” University and the Higher Party School in Moscow. He had worked as a correspondent for the newspapers “Novosti” (1967-1972) and “Pravda” (1974-1979) in Bucharest and at the foreign relations division of the Central Committee in Chisinau (1972-1974). He had been the director general of “Moldpress” Agency (1983-1990) and then the head of the Office of “Itar-Tass” Agency in Moldova (1990-1994). He had been a member of the Parliament of Moldova (1994-1998) and Ambassador of Moldova to Turkey, Egypt and Kuwait, with residence in Ankara (1998-2001).