BCLT Research Seminar with Rosalind Harvey

Disorganized Attachments, Boundaries, and High Value Women: How To Heal Your Relationship (with Literary Translation) in Three Easy Stages

Online

Wednesday 27 May, 4 - 5.30 pm (BST)

How do we relate to literary translation, and how is literary translation relational? Do we view it as a job, an art-form, both, or something else entirely, and to what degree do our backgrounds and temperaments play a part in this view? How and why might our personal histories draw us towards a profession that hovers somewhat uneasily on the edges of the publishing industry, a profession that requires both a high level of emotional intelligence and an ability to at times ignore the messages from our body telling us that our working conditions are less than favourable? How do we retain a love for our work while simultaneously questioning the limits of this love?

In this talk, Rosalind will share an excerpt from her work-in-progress, a book exploring translation, therapy and relationships, and which uses attachment theory as an imperfect lens to examine our attraction to and conflicts with texts, publishing and creative labour. 

Rosalind Harvey is a literary translator and writer. She has worked on books by many prominent Spanish-language writers, including Juan Pablo Villalobos, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Elvira Navarro and Enrique Vila-Matas; her translation of Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born was shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize and was the winner of the 2025 Jan Michalski Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Arts Foundation Fellow, and a founding member of the Emerging Translators Network. She is based in Coventry, and is currently writing a creative non-fiction book that examines literary translation through a personal, psychotherapeutic lens.