BCLT Panel Discussion: Translator as Editor

Online

Wednesday 22 July, 11.30am — 12.30pm (BST)

This panel will explore the relationship between being a translator and an editor. How are these two activities comparable? And how do they contradict each other? How does editing a translation differ from editing a text written in English? How does being an editor influence the work of translation?

Join Janani Ambikapathy, Bella Bosworth, Madeleine Rogers and Sonakshi Srivastava for a conversation about being an editor and a translator.

Janani Ambikapathy was born and raised in Chennai. She was awarded her PhD in English from the University of Cambridge. Her recent poetry pamphlet If Not Theirs was published by Veer2. Her poems, essays and translations have appeared at the Poetry Foundation, Lana Turner, Circumference Magazine, Firmament, Modernism/modernity and elsewhere. She is the editor of Modern Poetry in Translation.

Bella Bosworth is a freelance editor and occasional translator. She studied Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and was an editor at Penguin Random House for six years. Since going freelance, she has worked as an editor and copy-editor for And Other Stories, Picador, Little, Brown, Transworld and Puffin, and was the runner-up in the TA First Translation Award for her editorial work on Norah Lange’s People in the Room (with translator Charlotte Whittle). Her first translation appeared on Asymptote, where she has also reviewed translated literature and worked as a blog editor. 

Madeleine Rogers is an editor, proofreader, bookseller and literary translator. She studied French and Italian at the University of Oxford and holds an MA in Translation Studies from UCL. Her translations of Nolwenn Le Blevennec’s novels As the Eagle Flies and Friends and Lovers were published by Peirene Press in 2023 and 2025 respectively. She lives in Margate.

Sonakshi Srivastava is a senior writing fellow (ELT) at Ashoka University, the translations editor at Usawa Literary Review, and an educational arm assistant at Asymptote. Her writings have generously been supported by the PEN English x SALT Translation Grant, 2024 ASLE Translation Grant, Poetry HUES Foundation, Director’s Fellowship (Martha’s Vineyards Institute of Creative Writing), Diverse Voices Fellowship, and the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts. Her words may be found at Tendon Magazine, fingerfood mag, WritingWomen, Usawa Literary Review, The Locavore, The Alipore Post, ASAP/Art, The Bilingual Window, Potluck Zine, Hakara, etc. She is a former translation fellow with the South Asia Speaks programme.

Part of the BCLT International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer School, in collaboration National Centre for writing.