Have you ever wondered what TED Translators’ interests, passions or pursuits are outside of their translation work? Well, to learn more about our dynamic volunteers, we’re starting a series of weekly posts that’ll highlight a particular TED Translator and an aspect of his or her culture that he or she finds consistently compelling, vitalizing or just plain interesting.
This week, we asked Serbian TED Translator Milenka Okuka to tell us about a moving piece of music from her home country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and she shared this excellent live performance by the MoRS Blues Band with us. The song is called “Emina,” and its lyrics are drawn from a 1902 poem of the same name by Bosnian Serb poet Aleksa Šantić. An English translation of “Emina” and a bit about its history can be found here.
Milenka had this to say about the song and performance: “Like Aleksa Šantić, I was born in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so ‘Emina’ always reminds me of my beautiful home, especially since I now live in Montenegro. Also, this performance takes place at the opening ceremony of a traditional cliff-diving event on Stari Most, a 450-year-old bridge that spans the Neretva River, so one gets an intense sense of the majestic from watching it.”