Dear colleagues, we are honored to invite you to participate in the XV International Conference Russia and the West the Dialog of Cultures. The conference will be held 21-27 April 2012 in St. Paul’s Bay, Malta.

Svetlana G. Ter-Minasova

President of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Area Studies,
Doctor of Philology, Honored professor of the Lomonosov Moscow State University,
Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Birmingham (Great Britain),
President of the National Association of Teachers of English and President of the National Association of Applied Linguistics,
holder of the Fulbright Award (1995) and Lomonosov award (1996).

 Is It a Dialogue or a Conflict of Cultures?
Translation is a most important link between languages and cultures.
It is translation that plays the main part in a dialogue of cultures as  no dialogue is possible without a common language. The translation of fiction is an art, that of a scientific text is a convey of information. Any translation is a search for a unity of nations, it helps to find a common language.
This paper deals with difficulties which interfere with the work of translators and turn dialogues into conflicts of cultures.

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.
Robert Ilson

Imagining a Post-Imperial Community – Russian and British experience compared.
Charles McGregor
A paper with four aims:
- to suggest what we mean by “culture”;
- to discuss the relation of cultural identity to patriotism and nationalism;
- to offer some preliminary ideas on the processes by which nations which lost empires
in the 19 th and 20 th centuries acquired new identities;
-to consider the relation between national and ethnic identities national cultures and global one now.

В зеркале иной речи: М.В. Ломоносов и иностранные языки.
Ващенко Александр Владимирович (available only in Russian)

Реформы в России: опыт сравнительного регионального исследования.
Павловский Игорь Владимирович (available only in Russian)