Bristol Translates | School of Modern Languages

Literary Translation Summer School

3–7 July 2023

Aimed at practising translators at any stage of their career and at language enthusiasts who want to explore the world of literary translation, Bristol Translates offers the opportunity to work with leading professional translators to translate texts across the literary genres into English.

Bristol Translates summer school takes place entirely online, making it accessible to participants around the world. Groups will be limited to a maximum of 12 students.

There will be three full days of translation workshops, on Monday 3, Wednesday 5 and Friday 7 July, while Tuesday 4 and Thursday 6 July will be devoted to non-language-specific workshops and industry talks as well as professional and networking sessions. These include panels with publishers and themed sessions on what goes on behind the scenes in publishing, translating literary nonfiction, queer translation, war translation, theatre translation, kidslit, translating multilingualism, negotiating skills and a presentation by English PEN.

It was value-for-money, the teaching was world-class, and I've been able to network with other translators off the back of the workshops. Bristol Translates was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of my year.

BRISTOL TRANSLATES PARTICIPANT, 2022

Opportunities

Learn how to pitch your project

There will be opportunities to practise pitching to publishers.

Take part in the Comma Press competition

Another highlight will be the presentation of Comma Press’s translation book list and business model, together with a competition for translators from Arabic. The winning entrant(s) will be offered a publication opportunity with Comma.

Apply for a full bursary

The University of Bristol, together with our sponsors, are offering 15 bursaries which will cover the full cost of the early-bird fee (£295). Two additional bursaries are available in 2023: The Atlas Translations bursary generously supported by Clare Suttie, and the Bill Swainson bursary in honour of Mourid Barghouti.

To be eligible for these bursaries, you must:

be a person on low-income (less than £19,200 gross),
have applied by 28 February 2023 for a place on the Bristol Translates Summer School and
be a resident in the UK.

To ensure fair distribution of the available funding, applications will be assessed by a panel including the two directors of the Bristol Translates Summer School and the Academic Lead.

Please note that the deadline for applications has now passed.

Apply for a bursary from India

Thanks to the generous support of the Charles Wallace India Trust, 2 full bursaries are available for residents of India to attend our Hindi workshop.

To be eligible, you must:

be a resident of India,
explain, in a letter to bristol-translates@bristol.ac.uk, your motivation and commitment, and anticipated benefits to you of participating in the Summer School, and your intentions and plans for a career in translation,
declare, in the same letter, that, without a bursary, you would be unable to participate.

Letters of application to the India bursary need to be received by 31 March 2023.

Eligibility and fees

Since the workshops are all into English, it is essential that all applicants have excellent command of English (mother-tongue level or language of habitual use) and superior proficiency in their source language. Note that for Japanese, applicants should have at least Level 1 or 2 of the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test).

In addition to workshops dedicated to translation from a single language, we are pleased to offer a multilingual workshop, led by Daniel Hahn. You are welcome to apply for a place as a translator from any language into English.

We welcome applications from all members of our community and are particularly encouraging those from under-represented communities to join us. We welcome applications from refugees and asylum seekers.