Christina Kramer


Christina Elizabeth Kramer is Professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto and Chair of the university's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science. She is a specialist on Balkan languages and semantics, specifically on South Slavic languages. Her research focus on synchronic linguistics, sociolinguistics, verbal categories, language and politics.
Kramer authored Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students. The book – first published in 1999, revised and expanded in 2003 and 2011 – is the most recent English Macedonian textbook. She is a noted translator of literature from Bulgarian and Macedonian.
Kramer co-invented the language "Lavinian" for Nicolas Billon's play Butcher.

Education

Kramer worked as a translator for Berlitz Translation Service for some time, translating documents from Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish.
Since 1986 Kramer has been a member of the University of Toronto faculty. She was promoted to full professor in May 2001.

Key publications

Christina E. Kramer's translations of several Bulgarian and Macedonian novels have been published by the University of Wisconsin Press and Penguin Books.

Awards

Kramer received the 2006 Book Award from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages for best contribution to language pedagogy for her book Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students.
In 2014, Kramer was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to fund her work on translating a novel from Luan Starova's Balkan Saga cycle, The Path of the Eels. This was the first time ever a NEA grant was awarded to support a translation from Macedonian to English. Her translation of Lidija Dimkovska's "A Spare Life" made the long list for the Best Translated Book of 2017 Award.