The United Nations’ International Translation Day 2022

30 September 2022 - News
The 30th of September was marked as International Translation Day by the United Nations in 1991, after its promotion by the International Federation of Translators. The Federation have been celebrating this day since its creation in 1953.

Language diversity is an important part of Manchester’s culture and heritage, so we wanted to use today to highlight some key organisations in Literary Manchester who illustrate the importance of translation and remind you of some translation based events an opportunity currently available as well.


Instituto Cervantes

The Instituto Cervantes have bases in both Manchester and Leeds. They are an official Spanish Government Centre and have acted as a public institution since 1991 when they were founded. The mission is to promote the knowledge of the cultures of Spain and other Spanish speaking countries across the global, and Spanish language teaching.

They have a free online event today to promote International Translation day! It’s focus is on the challenges of poetry translation. You can find out more about it here.


Honford Star

Honford Star’s mission is to publish exciting literature from East Asia, be it classic or contemporary. We believe there are many ground-breaking East Asian authors and books yet to be read by English-language readers, so we aim to make these works as accessible as possible. By working with talented translators and exciting local artists, we hope to see more bookshelves containing beautiful editions of East Asian literature.


 

Carcanet

Carcanet are a Manchester publisher that publish a highly comprehensive and diverse list of modern and classic poetry. Their work is not just in English, but they have a focus on translating international poetry, as well as a range of other sources.


Comma Press

The not for profit publisher, Comma Press, specialise in fiction in translation and the short story. They publish various works including translation commissions with the intention of identifying cutting-edge (often marginalised) international voices.

They host an annual translation competition, the Emerging Translator Prize, with Bristol Translates! Summer School and the University of Bristol. The award aims to encourage applications from emerging translators looking for publishing opportunities. They in fact announced this year’s winner this week. Congratulations to Florence Taylor!


Translator Opportunity

As promised, we wanted to remind you of a current opportunity for translators connected to Manchester, or any other UNESCO City of Literature.

Nanjing City of Literature currently have an open call for SIX virtual Writers in Residence. The call has specified that this is open to writers, poets AND TRANSLATORS.

Find out more here. This is really exciting and we’d love to see Manchester represented in this amazing opportunity.

Applications must be in by Friday 21st October, 2022.


 

Multilingual City Poets Event

As part of Manchester Literature Festival, there is a free event at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation on at 7pm, Wednesday 19th October.

See Manchester’s first Multilingual City Poets, Jova Bagioli Reyes, Anjum Malik and Ali Al-Jamri, perform work inspired by protest, resistance, identity and home in English, Spanish, Urdu and Arabic.

Jova has written a new piece in Spanish for this evening which has been translated into English, Urdu and Arabic and all four versions will be performed.