Abstract
Translation surfaces are surfaces which come naturally into play both from a dynamical motivation (billiards in polygons) and from a more algebro-geometrical point of view (they are related to the Teichmuller space). We will start with some examples, give some motivations about why one is interested in them and then focus more on the dynamical side. We will give a short survey of some more or less classical result from the very rich literature. Time permitting, we will also relate this to some Diophantine approximation. Sito web: http://people.dm.unipi.it/babygeometri/