Aminata Sissoko from Mali, an international graduate of Penza State University, is the first in the world to translate a novel in verse by A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin" in the language of Bambara - a people scattered across the endless expanses of Africa.

Aminata Sissoko graduated from the Faculty of History, Languages and Literature and completed the course of "Linguistics" ("Theory and Practice of Intercultural Communication", which is implemented at the Department of "Russian as a Foreign Language") in 2020. Aminata admits that she took up the translation of Pushkin's work answering the call of her heart: “When I came to Russia, I fell in love with the Russian language. And the more I studied it, the deeper my love became."

This is not her first experience of translating Pushkin's works into the Bambara language: “Once I took a video of how I read Pushkin's works in Russian and sent this recording to my mother. But she did not understand a word, and I decided to translate his poem "I Loved You" into my native language, Bambara. Then my mother appreciated it and said it was very beautiful. " The PSU graduate admits that Eugene Onegin won’t be her last translation:  she is planning to translate several more Russian works.