The original version of Radio Bulgaria appeared one year and one month after the creation of the Bulgarian Radio, then called Radio Sofia. Since the very beginning, Radio Bulgaria offered a different view of the country, an important role in which was played by the translators and announcers from the foreign-language sections. At first, the broadcasts were in Esperanto, German, English, Italian and French. Despite the vicissitudes of time and the constant staff shortages in recent years, in our day Radio Bulgaria continues to bring the most important and interesting information about this country to listeners and users all over the world in 11 languages – Bulgarian, English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Greek, Serbian, Albanian, Turkish and Romanian.

Today we talk to Chavdar Arnaudiov who dedicated 33 years of his professional career to the French-language service, having started way back in 1972. He describes himself as someone who has “an aptitude to write rather than to speak”, but says he has had the good fortune of working with some of the top translators of the day, among them Reny Nikolova, Maria Rozanova, Maria Tsaneva and Susan Gorinova.

“When I started, Dimitar Tonev was assignment editor – he is no longer with us,” Chavdar Arnaudov says. “He had a poetic soul and had published a collection of poems. And as I had literary interests, he chose me – not that there were that many applicants but French had not quite gone out of fashion. There seems to be a certain revival now, but first, Spanish was all the vogue, then English, and now all young people seem to be studying English.”

Through the years, the Central Information Service, now “Bulgaria” desk, produced the articles that were translated into the respective languages, but the foreign-language sections too were in contact with listeners from all over the world. For the purpose, each one of them had a “correspondent” to answer all letters and collect data.  There were listeners who founded amateur radio clubs in different parts of the world:

“In France we had two such clubs of French listeners, French citizens, regular listeners of Radio Bulgaria in French,” adds Chavdar Arnaudov, and goes on to remember a curious occurrence from those times. “One day a bus full of 30 people turned up – they were French from the “Friends of Radio Sofia club” who had decided to take a trip to Bulgaria because they had been listening to us for many years and they thought it would be interesting to visit the country. That was in the early 1980s and I just didn’t know what to do, so I called the editor-in-chief of the foreign language services and he said to bring some of them up. So, we went to the editorial office, to the recording studios, which was actually not allowed.”

Besides wanting to pay a visit to some of Radio Bulgaria’s foreign-language services, short-wave listeners would ask different questions or request to hear some song or piece of music from the Bulgarian Radio’s rich audio archives:

“There have been times we have wanted to play more opera with the Bulgarian opera stars,” Chavdar Arnaudov says. “But on short wave that is not a good idea, because there is fading, atmospheric disturbances, the sound is different in winter and in summer. That is why we played more lively music like folklore. Folklore or pop, listeners liked the music. We have had questions about the monument on Shipka peak, about the rose festival in Kazanluk… Our listeners knew about the Bulgarian roses because we would send them souvenirs connected with roses.”

For an inside look at Radio Bulgaria click here

Photos courtesy of Chavdar Arnaudov, archive