International Translation Day (ITD) celebrates translation, translators and translated literature every 30 September. English PEN and the National Centre for Writing are collaborating to highlight and promote events and activities taking place across the UK in celebration of ITD 2024.
View the programme of events from organisations, publishers, academic institutions, festivals and other organisers here. All events and initiatives are planned, coordinated and delivered by the organiser listed, and further details on each initiative are available on the organiser's website.
Nationwide programme
Selkies House
Translating Difficult Language in Difficult Times
30 September 2024, 2pm BST, online
Selkies House is delighted to hold an online workshop for future and early-career literary translation professionals featuring two of our award-winning translators from the UK and US. Ellen Elias-Bursać, translator of Celebration by Damir Karakaš and Katie Brown, translator of From Savagery by Alejandra Banca.
Untold Narratives CIC
Untold Narratives: Translating fiction from Afghanistan
1 October 2024, 4pm BST, online
Join Untold Narratives in conversation with literary translators Parwana Fayyaz (Dari/English), Sabrina Nouri-Moosa (Persian/Dari/French), Abdul Bacet Khurram (Pashto/Dari), and Persian/English editor and publisher Azadeh Parsapour to explore the challenges and best practice for literary translation in countries with little or no publishing infrastructure, with a particular focus on Afghanistan.
Untold Narratives facilitates the Paranda Network – an online writer development programme for Afghan women writers in Afghanistan and those in the diaspora. Untold’s editors and literary translators work with these writers across three languages in 12 countries to develop their fiction and non-fiction. Over the past four years Untold has honed its editorial model, made up of writer, editor, and translator working closely together via a series of editorial development meetings that take place remotely, via secure messaging Apps.
Goethe-Institut London
Human versus Machine: AI Translation Slam, part 2
2 October 2024, 7pm BST, in person
Join us at Goethe-Institut London for the sequel to our 2023 AI translation slam which pitches the creative forces of literary translation by humans against AI translation tools.
Last year, our audience mostly favoured human translations over machine-generated results. Since then, the machines have evolved… but will they cope equally well with texts in German and French? Who will triumph this time?
You will witness two experienced translators, Joanna Pawulska Saunders and Aubrey Botsford, compete with machine translation systems expertly operated by Daniela Ford. After each round of texts, the audience gets to vote: Who translated it better – the humans or the machines?
The event will be moderated by Christophe Fricker and is supported by the Institut français.
And Other Stories
Reflections on Gaza – Ibtisam Azem at Cheltenham Literature Festival
5 October 2024, 12.30pm BST, in person
As the tragic conflict in Gaza continues to unfold, journalist Masuma Ahuja brings together Palestinian novelist and journalist Ibtisam Azem, Palestinian author Selma Dabbagh and poet and writer Monika Radojevic. Through conversation and poetry, they explore the role that artists and writing can play in responding to crisis and shaping our hopes for the future.
There will be a book signing after this event.
And Other Stories
Ibtisam Azem in conversation with Noreen Masud at Gloucester Road Books, Bristol
7 October 2024, 7pm BST, in person
Palestinian author and journalist, Ibtisam Azem will be at Gloucester Road Books, Bristol to discuss her urgent and powerful novel, The Book of Disappearance (translated by Sinan Antoon), in conversation with the acclaimed author of A Flat Place and Bristol University academic, Dr Noreen Masud. The Book of Disappearance is an essential novel for these times.
Wasafiri
Writing Your Translation Memoir an Online Translation Workshop with Sawad Hussain
8 October 2024, 7pm BST, online
Translators have always been seen as those who bring existing work into another language. However, there is now a new wave of celebrated translators writing their own novels – including Anton Hur, Jennifer Croft, and Bruna Dantas Lobato – and interest in the journey of translation is at an all-time high.
Tying in with Wasafiri magazine’s 40th Anniversary Issue on Futurisms, 2024/25 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain sees the future as one brimming with reflections by translators on their multiple trajectories. Her essay in the anthology Violent Phenomena – a kind of micro-memoir – is what prompted her to pursue offering this generative writing workshop, which will provide participants with the tools to write their own translation memoir.
Whether you’re playing with doing this at a micro-level, in the form of an extended essay, or you need guidance in plotting the chapters of your manuscript — this workshop is for you. Through this collaborative and vulnerable workshop, participants will gain a deeper understanding of what kinds of translation memoirs already exist (and what makes them work), learn how to connect with their readership better, and will be able to outline the main motivations for telling their story.
