Translation Exchange
A new outreach and research initiative
The Queen’s College Translation Exchange brings together expertise in literary translation and outreach within the College, University, city, and country to develop a broad programme of translation-related activities for students, schools, and the public.
The focus of the Translation Exchange is on bringing students from the Medieval and Modern Languages, Oriental Studies, and English faculties together with teachers and pupils from local schools for translation workshops. With an emphasis on translation as a creative, inspiring, and aspiration-raising activity, these workshops will channel the students’ expertise in translation and enthusiasm for language-learning and literature into enriching literary experiences for young people from primary age upwards.
The Exchange will partner with literary charity the Stephen Spender Trust and its ground-breaking ‘Translators in Schools’ education programmes to develop a unique training programme for students, and with Modern Poetry in Translation – also based at Queen’s – to develop resources for use in the classroom. The outreach training programme for students will also be devised in collaboration with Shadow Heroes. The centre’s directors, Dr Charlotte Ryland and Dr Jenny Higgins (details below), will hold a symposium on 'Translation in Education' at Queen’s in January 2019, bringing together practitioners and researchers in the field for practice-sharing. The symposium will also launch the Exchange’s research project on using translation to engage young learners.
Exchange events will include an international literature book club, support for events with international writers visiting Oxford, and a residency for an international writer.
Meet the team
Charlotte Ryland is a lecturer, project manager, editor, and translator with a particular interest in literary translation, supporting Modern Foreign Language teaching in schools, and widening participation at university. She is Director of the Stephen Spender Trust, whose mission includes promoting literary translation and multilingualism, and editor of New Books in German, an international project promoting literature in German and facilitating translations into English.
Jenny Higgins is a translator from French and Italian. Recent translations include Trysting by Emmanuelle Pagano (co-translated with Sophie Lewis), and she is currently working on another collection of stories by Pagano to be published in 2019 by Peirene Press. As well as translating, Jenny regularly leads translation workshops and is a tutor on the Advanced French Translation course at Oxford.