“Speech is the quintessence of the human soul. It makes us human. Speech helps us cleanse our souls and know ourselves better. It touches the soul of the one beside you”. This is the credo of Bulgarian writer, poet, teacher and translator Petko Hinov. He says that he has been linked with speech since his early childhood and serving it is the meaning of his life. He was born in 1972 in the city of Plovdiv (Central South Bulgaria) and was among the first Bulgarians who dared to enter the boundless world of the Chinese language and culture. He graduated Chinese and Romanian philology at the Saint Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. He translates books from Russian, Romanian, English, Chinese and Church-Slavonic into Bulgarian. Mr Hinov also writes poetry, tales and articles. In his view, being a translator, a poet, a writer and a teacher at the same time is the result of a personal vocation. He modestly shares a fragment of his favorite poem by Ivan Metodiev: “Do not tell the sparrow that it can fly! It will drop down!” Petko Hinov devoted nearly fifteen years of his life to monkhood. “I was close to an exceptionally gifted man, philologist, philosopher and theologian who taught me a lot of things and I am very grateful to him, says Mr Hinov. What provoked him to step on the road to spiritual search?

“Jesus is the one who makes you become a Christian. Monkhood is the way of life where you can be closest to God. When people feel love, they seek proximity. However, I think one can be a monk even if he is not dressed in a cassock. Monkhood is the most sublime lifestyle, the road to perfection. However, if you are not ready to walk this road without any hesitation and being able to sacrifice your ego, you should better not start. ”

Although Petko knew that this period of his life was beneficial to him, he decided to leave the monastery before he took a vow. When he abandoned monkhood, Petko departed to China to become an English teacher. Did Petko Hinov make a sharp turn in his life?

“This is a very interesting question. Let me put it this way: Chinese culture is many-sided. Christianity, including the Orthodox one, is popular there. In my view, language, no matter if it is Chinese or any other one does not contradict to monkhood. On the contrary, monachism, especially in Bulgaria, is tightly connected with the verbal culture. I have been linked with speech since my earliest childhood and serving it is the meaning of my life. China has attracted me with the unimaginable richness of its language. In fact, I am closer to the literature of the East, rather than to its philosophy. I can only regret that I do not have enough human power to take from the Chinese speech as many “precious stones” as possible and later embody them into the Bulgarian speech”.

Currently Petko Hinov is writing a book dedicated to his life in China and his love with the East. The first touch to the Chinese language was through movies. “I watched a Chinese film and I liked the martial arts a lot. Later I watched it again and this time I was impressed by the melody of the language, especially in the speech of the Chinese women. It sounds as a birds’ singing.” The Chinese hieroglyphs also attract Petko. He works in partnership with the East-West publishing company over the translation of one of the most emblematic novels in the Chinese literature- Sleep in Vermilion Chambers. “The more difficult a certain text is, the bigger the pleasure during translation. This is so, because all easy things are boring to me.” In his view, every translator has the gift to translate certain types of texts. “For instance I would find it difficult to translate a philosophical text or a technical one. However, I can deal with poetry every day”, Petko Hinov confesses. He regrets that nowadays not many people read works of such type and he has to take the limited market demand into consideration. Chinese philology is still fairly new in Bulgaria and the number of those who took the risk to translate from Chinese is very small. Many of the Chinese works sold in Bulgaria were translated from western languages. A big part of the Bulgarian literature was also translated in Chinese from Russian and English. “Chinese people do not know much about Bulgaria”, Petko Hinov goes on to say. This is why he has the ambition to make a web portal entitled Bulgaria for China which has to bridge the cultures of both countries. The portal will contain rich information about the Bulgarian culture and traditions, the tourist opportunities and the bilateral economic cooperation. Petko Hinov has more about his link with China and the experience which left a deep mark in his memories.”

“My dearest experience was linked with all wonderful people I met there. The feeling that I am part of the Chinese people is what fills me up the most. The ordinary Chinese have kept something very ancient which unfortunately has been ruined to some extent under the pressure of the mass TV and media culture introduced by superficial movies and books. In my view, Chinese people are a great example of how we ourselves could be, although this nation also experienced many shocks and went under a cultural revolution. However, their roots are much deeper and can not be eradicated so easily.”

The shortcomings that obstruct Bulgarians unite as one nation, the beauty of nature, all small things which give a meaning to every single moment of our lives, are among the topics which provoke Petko Hinov write the most.

“I think that speech is the sharpest scalpel which can remove the cancer from our society. This is why I am always stricken with grief when I see people abuse the Bulgarian speech and when speech is unnecessarily eaten up by all types of foreignisms and imitations of something which does not belong to us. In fact, people know that the word language means nation in proto-Bulgarian. The people and the language are an entity, i.e. when the language gets spoiled, we can find out what actually happens in the “soul” of a certain nation. I believe that the revival of the Bulgarian nation can start from a firm policy directed at the protection of the Bulgarian speech.”

English version: Kostadin Atanasov