-
Ros Schwartz, Co-Director
Over the past four decades Ros Schwartz has translated over 100 fiction and non-fiction titles from French. In 2010, she published a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and her recent translated works include Mireille Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance and Selfies by Sylvie Weil. She is one of the team re-translating Georges Simenon’s works for Penguin Classics. Her latest publication is Max Lobe’s Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside? (HopeRoad) and 2023 sees the publication of her translation of Simone Weil’s The Need For Roots (Penguin Classics). Ros gives talks and masterclasses around the world and is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow. In 2009 she was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2017 she was the recipient of the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence.
Photo: Anita Staff
-
Holly Langstaff, Co-Director
Holly Langstaff is an academic in French Studies with broader interests in translation. She runs the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation at the University of Warwick and the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, an outreach initiative from The Queen's College Translation Exchange. She is chair of the Oxford-Weidenfeld translation prize in 2023. She was previously involved in Warwick Translates in 2019 and Bristol Translates in 2022. She is a Lecturer in French at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford where she teaches modern and contemporary French literature and translation. Her monograph Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot is forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press in 2023.
-
Sawad Hussain, Arabic Tutor
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognised by English PEN, the Anglo-Omani Society and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library and the National Centre for Writing. Her most recent translations include Black Foam by Haji Jaber (AmazonCrossing) and What Have You Left Behind by Bushra al-Maqtari (Fitzcarraldo Editions). Her upcoming translations include The Djinn's Apple by Djamila Morani (Neem Tree Press), Edo's Souls by Stella Gaitano (Dedalus Books) and Guardian of Superficialities by Bothayna al-Essa (Restless Books). She was the 2022 co-translator in residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation. She tweets @sawadhussain.
-
Jack Hargreaves, Chinese Tutor
Jack Hargreaves is a literary and academic translator of Yorkshire extraction. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Samovar, Words Without Borders, LitHub, adda, and elsewhere. He translated Shen Dacheng’s story ‘Novelist in the Attic’ and Wen Zhen’s ‘Date at the Art Gallery’ for Comma Press and, for Astra House with Yan Yan, both Li Juan’s Winter Pasture and Chai Jing’s Seeing. Authors whose work he has translated include Chia Joo Ming, Yuan Ling, Chen Chuncheng, Wang Hongzhe, Xiaowen Zhu and more. He is part of the Paper Republic management team and produces a monthly newsletter about all things Chinese translation, and was ALTA’s Mentee for Singaporean Literature in 2021. He is currently on a three-year virtual residency for young artists in Nanjing.
-
Nicky Harman, Chinese Tutor
Nicky Harman translates fiction, and occasionally non-fiction and poetry from Chinese. She is based in the UK, and before becoming a full-time literary translator, taught technical translation at Imperial College London University. Prize-winning authors she has translated include: A Yi, Anni Baobei, Chan Koon-chung, Chen Xiwo, Han Dong, Huang Beijia, Jia Pingwa, Dorothy Tse , Xinran, Xu Xiaobin, Xu Zhiyuan, and Yan Ge. She has won several awards, including the 2020 China Special Book Award, the Mao Tai Cup People's Literature Chinese-English translation prize 2015, and the 2013 China International Translation Contest, Chinese-to-English section. When not translating, she spends time promoting contemporary Chinese fiction to the English-language reader. She co-runs and is a trustee of the registered non-profit Paper Republic; runs literary events and writes blogs; and gives talks at literary festivals and, especially, the Centre for New Chinese Writing at Leeds University. Photo: Julia Schönstädt
-
Sarah Ardizzone, French Tutor
Sarah Ardizzone is a translator from the French-speaking world with some 50 titles to her name. Her work spans hip-hop lyrics, picture books, graphic novels and travel memoirs, as well as children’s, YA and literary fiction. Her time in Marseille led to a special interest in sharp dialogue and multi-heritage slang. Authors include Faïza Guène, Gaël Faye, Yasmina Reza, Daniel Pennac and Alexandre Dumas. Twice recipient of the Marsh award, she has won the Scott-Moncrieff prize and a New York Times notable book accolade. She develops live multilingual performances for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, including a 2022-2023 British Council-funded tour (UK/France/Algeria) of Faïza Guène's Discretion with Good Chance Theatre. She was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2022.
-
Natasha Lehrer, French Tutor
Natasha Lehrer is a prize-winning writer, translator and editor. Her longform journalism and reviews appear regularly in the Guardian, Observer, Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Frieze and Fantastic Man, among others, and she was for many years literary editor of the Jewish Quarterly, working with writers such as Deborah Levy, Lauren Elkin, George Prochnik, Hadley Freeman and Joanna Rakoff. She has written widely about contemporary France and contributed to several books, including the recent Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism, edited by Jo Glanville (Short Books/Norton, 2022). She has translated over two dozen novels and works of nonfiction, several of which have been shortlisted for international translation prizes. In 2016 she was awarded the Scott Moncrieff prize for Suite for Barbara Loden. In 2022 Natasha was co-convener of the English-French Vice Versa workshop in Arles run by ATLAS, the French literary translation organisation.
-
Louise Rogers Lalaurie, French Tutor
Louise Rogers Lalaurie has translated 15 novels and over 30 non-fiction titles. She is the winner of three French Voices awards and a shortlistee for the Crime Writer's Association International Dagger and the Best Translated Book Award. With a background in art history, art and magazine publishing, she also translates for leading French cultural institutions and luxury houses. Her MPhil. from the University of London Institute in Paris was the springboard for Matisse: The Books (Thames & Hudson/University of Chicago Press, 2020), her acclaimed study of Henri Matisse's livres d'artiste. Her co-translation of Antoine Laurain’s novel An Astronomer in Love is just out from Gallic Books. She is currently translating The Samurai of the Red Carnation by Québec author Denis Thériault (Pushkin Press, 2024).
-
Christophe Fricker, German Tutor
Christophe Fricker is a multi-award winning travel writer and translator working between German and English. He won first prize at the John Dryden competition for his translations of sonnets by Matthias Politycki and has received two DÜF grants. He is the German translator of Nobel favourite Garielle Lutz and internet sensation Yanko Tsvetkov (Atlas of Prejudice) and has translated books by science writer Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Guardian columnist Owen Jones, megaselling author-illustrator Corinna Luyken, and others. He serves as advisor to Krachkultur, a literary journal. Christophe is the director of the MA Translation at the University of Bristol and an instructor at Deutsche Schülerakademie, a summer school run by the German government’s talent support centre.
-
Ruth Martin, German Tutor
Ruth Martin studied English literature before gaining a PhD in German. She has been translating fiction and non-fiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth and Hannah Arendt to Shida Bazyar and Nino Haratischwili. Her co-translation (with Charlotte Collins) of Haratischwili's The Eighth Life won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Ruth has taught translation to undergraduates at Birkbeck and the University of Kent, and has been a tutor at two previous Bristol Translates summer schools. She is also a former co-chair of the Society of Authors Translators Association.
-
Mohini Gupta, Hindi Tutor
Mohini Gupta is a DPhil Candidate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. She has been the Charles Wallace India Trust Translator-Writer Fellow in 2017, hosted by Literature Across Frontiers at Aberystwyth University. An alumna of SOAS University of London, she has been a Research Fellow at Sarai, CSDS, and a translator-in-residence at the Sangam House international writers’ residency in Bangalore. She has written on languages, literature and translation for publications such as The Caravan Magazine, Huffington Post, TheWire.in, Scroll.in and the WorldKidLit blog. Her English-Hindi translations have been published by Tulika Publishers. She is also a trained Indian Classical (Hindustani) vocalist and a Western Classical pianist.
-
Howard Curtis, Italian Tutor
Howard Curtis has translated more than a hundred books, mostly fiction, from Italian, French and Spanish. Among the Italian writers he has translated are Luigi Pirandello, Beppe Fenoglio, Leonardo Sciascia, Giorgio Scerbanenco, Gianrico Carofiglio, Pietro Grossi, Filippo Bologna, Fabio Geda, Andrej Longo, Paolo Sorrentino, Matteo Righetto and Marco Malvaldi.
-
Morgan Giles, Japanese Tutor
Morgan Giles is a Japanese translator and critic. She has translated authors including Yu Miri, Hideo Furukawa, Hitomi Kanehara, and Nao-cola Yamazaki. Her translation of Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri received the 2019 Translators Association's First Translation Prize and the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
-
Polly Barton, Japanese Tutor
Polly Barton is a Japanese translator and writer. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai. In 2019 she won the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for her non-fiction work Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, which came out with Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2021.
-
Robert Chandler, Russian Tutor
Robert Chandler has translated Sappho and a selection of Apollinaire for Everyman’s Poetry. His translations from Russian include many works by Vasily Grossman ¬– two of which have been dramatized at length on BBC Radio 4 – and by Andrey Platonov. He has also compiled three anthologies for Penguin Classics: of Russian short stories, of Russian magic tales and of Russian Poetry. He is a co-translator of three volumes of memoirs and stories by Teffi and the author of a short biography of Alexander Pushkin. His translations have won prizes in both the UK and the USA and his own poems have appeared in the TLS and elsewhere. Teaching is increasingly important to him, and he runs a monthly translation workshop at Pushkin House (London).
-
Anna Gunin, Russian Tutor
Anna Gunin is a translator from Russian. Among her translations are Oleg Pavlov’s award-winning novel Requiem for a Soldier and Mikail Eldin’s war memoir The Sky Wept Fire, winner of an English PEN Writers in Translation award. She is the co-translator of Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer (Penguin Modern Classics), lauded by the Times Literary Supplement as a ‘masterly new translation’ that ‘retains the nerve and pulse of the Russian’. Her translations of Pavel Bazhov’s fairy tales appear in Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics), shortlisted for the 2014 Rossica Prize. She has also translated film scripts by Yury Arabov, Denis Osokin and Marina Potapova, plays for the Royal Court International Department and poetry by Ilya Kormiltsev among others. Anna has taught on the MA translation programmes at the University of Bristol and City, University of London. Photo: Alexander Gunin
-
Bryan Karetnyk, Russian Tutor
Bryan Karetnyk is an award-winning British writer, literary critic and translator. His recent translations from the Russian include major novels by Boris Poplavsky, Gaito Gazdanov, Irina Odoevtseva and Yuri Felsen, and he is the editor and principal translator of the landmark Penguin Classics anthology Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky (2017). An affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge, where he teaches Russian literature, culture and translation, he is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, the Spectator and the Financial Times.
-
Rosalind Harvey, Spanish Tutor
Rosalind Harvey is a critically-acclaimed literary translator based in Coventry. She has worked on books by several award-winning Spanish-language writers, including Juan Pablo Villalobos’ Down the Rabbit Hole (shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize), and Herralde Prize-winner Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Arts Foundation Fellow, and a founding member of the Emerging Translators Network, and has taught translation at the universities of Roehampton, Warwick and Bristol.
