Translation Exchanges: events from the Translation Exchange on international literature and literary translation, including our termly International Book Clubs. Browse the tiles at the bottom of the page.
Translating for the Theatre
Friday 3rd March 2023, 5pm-7pm, Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College.
Translating for the Theatre with Anne Monfort: workshop and public discussion.
Anne Monfort is a theatre translator and the artistic director of Day-for-Night Theatre Company. Translation has been at the heart of her work for the stage since she became the first director in France to stage the German playwright, Falk Richter. In this workshop, the audience will watch Anne and students from across the University translate scenes together, bringing together a mix of languages to solve the particular problems a translator faces when working on a text for performance. Following the workshop, Anne will answer questions from the audience about her work.
Open to all. Please reserve your free tickets here.
Translation Slam at the Oxford Literary Festival
Monday, 27 March 2023, 4pm-5.15pm. Oxford Martin School Lecture Theatre.
Two literary translators, Ruth Clarke and Annie McDermott, share and debate their English versions of the same text, a short passage drawn from contemporary Spanish literature. The two will compare their choices, revealing the reasoning behind them and the creative machinations of the translator’s mind. Discussions are chaired by Polly Barton, translator-in-residence at Queen’s College Oxford.
The translation slam is a format rapidly gaining popularity at literary festivals around the world. It offers a glimpse into the overarching and nitty-gritty choices of the translator and is a must for anyone interested in language, translation and international literature.
Clarke works from Italian, French and Spanish, and has translated an eclectic range of work by authors from Benin to Venezuela, including Cristina Caboni’s debut novel The Secret Ways of Perfume, Aurora Lassaletta Atienza’s memoir The Invisible Brain Injury and Evelina Santangelo’s haunting novel From Another World. She is the translator in residence for Durham University and New Writing North. McDermott is a literary translator working from Spanish and Portuguese into English. Her translations include Empty Words and The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, Dead Girls and Brickmakers by Selva Almada, The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías and Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate.
In association with Queen’s Translation Exchange and TORCH as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme.
Booking essential (£7–£12.50): Please book here.
Past events
Translating Topol: Jáchym Topol and Alex Zucker in conversation
Tuesday, 7th February 2023, 5pm-6.30pm, Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College.
The Queen’s Translation Exchange and Czech Studies at Oxford are delighted to host celebrated Czech writer Jáchym Topol and leading translator Alex Zucker.
This event celebrates the publication of Topol’s novel A Sensitive Person in Zucker’s translation (Yale University Press, 2023). Author and translator will join QTE Translator-in-Residence, Polly Barton, for a round-table discussion on the challenges of literary translation. This will be followed by a Q&A with Topol and Zucker, featuring readings from the book.
Click here to find out more about ‘A Sensitive Person’.
The organisers would like to thank the Ilchester Fund for the generous support that has made this event possible.
Brazil Week: Portuguese Creative Translation Workshop
Friday 10th February 2023, 1pm–2.30pm, Lecture Room 2, Taylor Institute Library, Oxford.
This year’s Brazil Week takes Indigenous Brazil as its focus. We are delighted that Rahul Bery, teacher, translator and close colleague of the Translation Exchange, will be leading a Portuguese to English creative translation workshop. We will be translating sections from Micheliny Verunschk’s O som do rugido da onça (2021). This event is a collaboration between the Sub-Faculty of Portuguese and the Translation Exchange at Queen’s College, Oxford.
