Translating Translators, a celebration of the Feast of the Holy Translators

From Venice to Calcutta, Dr Erin Piñon will trace the many images of the Armenian Holy Translators over time and celebrate the artists, engravers, and printers responsible for their proliferation.

Each year, Armenia's ancient and medieval men of letters are celebrated for their contributions to the Armenian language. The Holy Translators (Surb Targmanichner), as the group came to be known and celebrated, laid the foundations for, and forged new paths in Classical Armenian translation and original textual production. From the invention of the alphabet to the composition of hymns, the Holy Translators established their legacy in poetry, spiritual literature, and the liturgy. This talk will not overview their many accomplishments. Instead, it focuses on how the Translators were visualized and materialized over the centuries and vast territories: images translated across media and textual genres.

This event coincides with the British Library exhibition, Britanahay Բրիտանահայ: Armenian and British (Sep 2025 - Feb 2026).

About the Speaker

Dr Erin Piñon is an art historian specializing in early modern Armenian book arts, spanning cultural networks from Europe to Asia. She earned her PhD from Princeton University, where her work explored Armenian painting, translation, and ritual practices across Istanbul, Aleppo, and Isfahan. Her research on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century visual and material culture has appeared in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s publications, the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, West 86th Street, and the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, to cite a few. She has over a decade of experience working in museums, galleries, special collections, and archives.