May 12, 2022: The Zoryan Institute is pleased to announce its upcoming project entitled Transcription and Translation: Preserving and Sharing the Stories of Canada’s Armenian Genocide Survivors, made possible by the financial support of Library and Archives Canada through its 2022 Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHCP). With this new initiative, the Zoryan Institute will be embarking on the significant task of transcribing the audio-visual interviews of its renowned Armenian Genocide Oral History Collection, beginning with the survivors who called Canada home. Their stories will then be translated from Armenian to English, making their stories accessible to the wider Canadian public, researchers, historians, and future generations of Canadians, both within and outside of the Armenian Diaspora.

Interviews for this collection were conducted between 1980-1990. With this year marking the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, these first-hand testimonies have become very precious archival material. These interviews provide an in-depth understanding of the experiences of Canada’s Armenian genocide survivors before, during, and after the Genocide. Without their transcription and translation, these stories are at risk of being forgotten.

Making the largely unknown stories of Canada’s Armenian Genocide survivors more accessible to the Canadian public will increase awareness about how the legacies of these individuals continue to influence contemporary Canadian life. These interviews demonstrate the immense economic, cultural, and scientific contributions that these survivors and their predecessors in the Armenian Diaspora community have made to Canadian society. Moreover, the translated interviews will allow future generations of Canadian-Armenians to immerse themselves in the lives, experiences and culture of their ancestors.

The Transcription and Translation: Preserving and Sharing the Stories of Canada’s Armenian Genocide Survivors project is targeted to be completed by April of 2023.

For more information on this project, please contact zoryan@zoryaninstitute.org.

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