Founded by Daniel Hahn in 2010, our translation mentoring programme aims to develop successive new cohorts of literary translators into English, particularly for languages whose literature is currently under-represented in English translation.
The scheme matches up experienced translators with emerging translators for a six-month period during which they work together on practical translation projects, developing their craft through working on a chosen text or texts. The mentor acts as an adviser to the mentee on aspects of life as a professional translator, such as time management, meeting deadlines, managing finances and understanding contracts, and as an advocate for their mentee with publishers in search of literary translators. The mentor will be a professional literary translator but may not translate from the language supported in the mentorship.
The evidence to date suggests that participation in the scheme represents, in itself, a significant professional development for mentees, with publishers seeing the mentoring cohort as a reliable source of high quality emerging translators.
Mentees receive a £500 bursary, split into two payments over the course of the mentorship, and reasonable travel expenses associated with the mentorship, agreed in advance with The National Centre for Writing. The mentorship will include an Industry Day, specially tailored to the needs of emerging translators, as well as access to London Book Fair.
The National Centre for Writing will facilitate an initial meeting between successful applicants and their mentors to agree the nature of working together (project scope and regularity of meetings) with work continuing for a six-month period, either in person, by Skype or by telephone as appropriate. A minimum of four meetings is expected during the period.
Supported by Arts Council England, The Danish Arts Foundation, The Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize, The Literary Translation Institute of Korea, The Polish Cultural Institute, The Royal Norwegian Embassy, NORLA, The Russian Institute for Literary Translation, The Italian Cultural Institute, Pro-Helvetia and the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities at UCLA and Waseda University.
Over the course of the coming few months NCW is working to revise the ELTM Scheme to recognise the achievements of the last ten years and to explore ways of developing the scheme in the coming ten years.
We’re committed to revising the programme in the following ways and will update the website and keep in touch with the translation world, our partners and funders as we make the changes:
Mentors: We wish to ensure we have a rich mix of mentoring talent on our programme and will be working with partners to broaden to pool of talent we’re lucky to draw from by making a call out for future potential mentors early in the new year. We are also planning to offer training opportunities for literary translators interested in becoming mentors with us and more generally.
Languages: We are working with partners, funders and our team at NCW to explore how we can offer a broader range of languages over the coming few years.
Mentees: We are working with a range of partners to ensure the translators coming through the programme represent an increased diversity of voices, backgrounds and experiences.
