The Charles Wallace India Trust translation residency has been offered by the British Centre for Literary Translation since the 1990s offering translators from India the opportunity to spend time at the University of East Anglia working on a literary translation project of their choice.

While their translation project forms the focus of their stay with us, we also encourage Fellows to engage in the academic, cultural and social life of the faculty.

BCLT is located within the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, which offers teaching at undergraduate and post-graduate level in literary translation.We aim to offer CWIT Fellows the opportunity to present papers and talk about work in progress with translators and creative writers.

Translation Fellowship 2021 

Applications for the 2021 Fellowship are OPEN.

Applications are invited for the 2021 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in Literary Translation. In 2021 we are offering one Fellowship, and we hope the successful applicant will be in residence for ten weeks from Sunday 26th September – Saturday 4th December 2021. If COVID-19 restrictions prevent us from hosting the Fellow in person we will offer the opportunity as a virtual Fellowship if it suits both parties. BCLT will be assessing the situation over the coming months and will discuss the terms of the residency with the chosen Fellow depending on the circumstances in the months leading up to the Fellowship.  

If the Fellowship must take place virtually, BCLT will work closely with the chosen Fellow to discuss the structure of the Fellowship and the types of activities that can take place in a virtual format.

Download full details of the 2021 Fellowship, including information about accommodation, the living grant and travel expenses.

Who is eligible?

The applicant should:

• be an Indian citizen living in India

• be aged over 25 

• have completed postgraduate studies and/or have at least 5 years professional or academic experience

• provide a proposal stating clearly what they want to do at the host institution and how they plan to use the experience on return to India

• not have had a CWIT grant within the previous 5 years.

How to apply 

Applications should be sent by email only to bclt@uea.ac.uk and must include the following: 

• Application form

• A full CV

• A passport-sized photo

• A clear proposal (1,000 words maximum) of what you want to achieve in coming to BCLT and how you will use this in your work once you return to India.

• Examples of your literary translation work.

Attachments must be in PDF, Word or JPEG format and should not be larger than 3MB. 

Please do not send any supporting material such as books by post as such material cannot be taken into account in assessing your application and we will not be able to return it to you. 

Your application should also include two completed reference forms from referees who know your work very well. The reference form should be completed by your referees, who should return the form directly to BCLT. 

Please note that this residency is subject to a successful visa application.

The closing date for receipt of applications is 12 April 2021. 

The successful applicant will be notified by 14 May 2021.

Translation Fellowship 2020

Due to uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 global crisis, the 2020 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship at BCLT did not take place. 

Translation Fellowship 2019

The 2019 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship was awarded to Dr Shampa Roy. Dr Roy was resident at BCLT from 29 September - 7 December 2019. 

Dr Shampa Roy is an Associate Professor at the Dept. of English, Miranda House, Delhi Univeristy, Delhi. In a career of close to thirty years, she has taught diverse undergraduate courses ranging from Nineteenth Century British Fiction to Indian Writings in Translation. Roy's articles have been published in international journals like Feminist Review and Interventions and her translated work has appeared as chapters in books. Her book, In Zenanas and Beyond  was published by Lambert Academic Publishing, Saarbrucken in 2011 and Gender and Criminality in Bangla Crime Narratives in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries was published by Palgrave Macmillan, UK in 2017. She has co-edited, along with Saswati Sengupta and Sharmila Purkayastha, a collection of essays on Rabindranath Tagore's Ghare Baire/Home and the World titled Towards Freedom (Orient Longman, 2007) and is particularly excited about working with the same editorial  team on the book, The 'Bad' Women of Bombay Films: Studies in Desire and Anxiety (forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, US, 2020). Roy has twice been a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust grant for short term reseach (in 2000 and 2008). She has also been an Academic Visitor at the Faculty of Languages and Cultures, SOAS in 2016 and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, in May-June 2019. 

Translation Fellowship 2018

Dr Urvashi Sabu was our 2018 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow (30 September - 8 December 2018). 

Dr Urvashi Sabu is Associate Professor, Dept of English, PGDAV College, Delhi University, Delhi. Her area of specialization is Pakistani Women’s Poetry in Urdu. She was member of Delhi University’s Apex Committee against Sexual Harassment (2009-2013) and is currently the Convener and Chairperson of the Internal Complaints Committee against Sexual Harassment (ICC) OF PGDAV College. An avid debater, speaker, and theatre enthusiast, she has headed the cultural society of PGDAV College from 2004-2006 and in 2015-16. She has to her credit over 20 published prose and poetry translations, and several research papers. Her areas of interest include cinema as well as cinematic adaptations of literary works, social media and film studies, and travel writing. Along with being an intrepid traveler, Dr Sabu is also passionate about women’s issues. For her tenure at BCLT, she undertook a translation of renowned Pakistani poet and activist Kishwar Naheed’s non-fiction prose work, Buri Aurat Ke Khutoot: Naazaida Beti Ke Naam (Letters of a Bad Woman: To Her Unborn Daughter)

Translation Fellowship 2016-2017

The 2016-2017 Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship was awarded to Sreedevi K Nair. Sreedevi is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English at NSS College for Women, Neeramankara, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

During her 11 weeks in Norwich, Sreedevi undertook independent research entitled ‘Sita’s Sorrow: When Malayali Women Retell The Ramayana.’ 

Translation Fellowship 2015-2016

Sanjukta Dasgupta of Calcutta University took up the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship at BCLT in 2016.

Professor Dasgupta is Former Head of the Department of English and Former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Calcutta University. Recipient of the Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship and Fulbright Scholar in Residence grant, Australia India Council fellowship, Gender Studies fellowship grant, University of British Columbia, among others,  she has has been invited to participate in conferences and teach/lecture at universities in the USA, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia.  

During her Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship at BCLT she worked on a project entitled 'Rabindranath Tagore and Madhurilata Tagore: Gender Discourse and Representation of Women in the Texts of Father and Daughter. A Translated Miscellany'.

The gender-specific translation project in four parts comprised translations of selected essays, poems and letters of Rabindranath Tagore as well as translations of the short stories of Madhurilata Tagore.

Translation Fellowship 2014-15

Mamta Sagar was awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship 20 April  -  5 July 2015.

Dr Sagar is a poet, playwright and translator. She is Assistant Professor, Centre for Kannada Studies, Bangalore University. During her residency she worked towards compiling Translating Voices of Resistance, a collection of 100 poems by 50 contemporary poets for an international anthology voicing resistance.