Future Translators Offered to Learn English and Chinese Through Lukashenka's Speeches — Relevant Textbooks Also Available

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Anthologies of Lukashenka's public speeches were published in 2025.

The main author of the English language textbook is listed as the university's vice-rector, Volha Lushchynskaya. Among other authors are lecturers from the Faculty of English, Maryna Viarkovich and Anhelina Bakhanovich-Shykuts.

The 154-page textbook with Chinese translation was published under the editorship of Natallia Laptseva, the current rector of BDUZM. Laptseva took over the university in October 2020, when Natallia Baranav, a university legend who had led it for 25 years, was removed from her post as rector following student protests.

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The authors of the book are lecturers from the Department of Theory and Practice of the Chinese Language: associate professor Maryna Filimonava and lecturers Sun Xiaoqin and Xiao Yi. Reviewers are another associate professor from that department, Nadzeya Mikhalkova, and Yuliya Malatkova, an associate professor and head of a similar department at BSU.

The textbook offers texts of Lukashenka's speeches and translations of the speeches into Chinese. Accordingly, the students' task is to translate speeches from and into Chinese during classes, as stated in the book, "to improve oral and written translation skills."

On the first page, students are greeted by a portrait of Lukashenka with his 15-year-old quote about the importance of patriotism for youth. Further on, there's an introduction in which the book's authors tried to explain why they offer Lukashenka's speeches to future translators: according to them, this is necessary to learn the translation of political texts and simultaneously grasp the modern context of international relations. The textbook says nothing about this context not ending with Lukashenka.

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As for the texts themselves, these are fragments of speeches from various events: from the "For Spiritual Revival" award to meetings with Putin and university students. The fragments are presented in Russian or Belarusian and in Chinese, meaning one can compare how identical phrases appear in different languages. There are also separately highlighted fragments of speeches in Russian for translation into Chinese.

The textbook is striking in how few exercises it contains. There are no auxiliary materials related to translation: for example, exercises that would help translate the text better or draw attention to expressions interesting for translation within the texts. The authors of the anthology simply compiled Lukashenka's speeches on various topics and their translations into one book, and then processed them slightly.

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