For Mid Career & Experienced Translators

Training the Trainer Workshop at BCLT Summer School

This particular workshop strand at the annual BCLT Summer School is for experienced literary translators that have published work and would like to receive some training in leading their own literary translation workshops.

Successful applicants will spend the summer school week both shadowing our workshop leaders and also taking part in dedicated workshops for the Training the Trainer cohort, led by an experienced Summer School practitioner. These workshops address specific techniques, ideas and challenges when leading literary translation workshops.

Applications for this year's Training the Trainer workshop are now CLOSED

The John Dryden Prize

BCLT co-sponsors the The John Dryden Translation Competition alongside the British Comparative Literature Association. Prizes are awarded annually for the best unpublished literary translations from any language into English, subject to finding a reader (entrance fee is refunded if no reader is available). Literary translation includes poetry, prose, or drama from any period. The competition is currently hosted by the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds.

Find out more

Opportunities at National Centre for Writing

National Centre for Writing (NCW) is a contemporary literature house in the heart of England’s first UNESCO City of Literature, committed to the transformative power of stories for personal, social and community development. Through its mentoring and residency programmes, NCW aims to reduce barriers to access to the literary translation profession for those currently less represented in the UK.

NCW offers a range of residencies for literary translators in its two-bedroom cottage at Dragon Hall. Through its Visible Communities programme, NCW provides professional development opportunities for UK-based Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse literary translators, as well as translators working from heritage, diaspora, and community languages.

In addition, a wealth of support and information for translators at all stages of their careers is available through NCW’s Writing Hub.

The Sebald Lecture

The Sebald Lecture is given annually on an aspect of literature in translation. Originally called the St. Jerome Lecture, it is now named after W.G. Sebald, who set up the BCLT in 1989. It is presented by the British Centre for Literary Translation in partnership with The British Library in London.

Previous speakers have included Elif Shafak, Emily Wilson, Arundhati Roy, and Margaret Atwood, among many others. Discover more and watch past Sebald Lectures here.

Visit our library

The BCLT Library, housed within the British Centre for Literary Translation at UEA, is a resource available to literary translators, researchers, UEA staff and students and the general public. Almost all of the library’s collection is available for readers to explore. Within the BCLT Library are books written in a wide variety of languages, as well as books translated into English from various languages. The library also contains reference works for the practice of literary translation, translations of poetry collections, dual-language poetry texts, journals relevant to literary translation, anthologies of translated works and biographies of writers.

Visit the BCLT Library on Tuesdays, 10am — 4pm. Find us in the Lakshmi Holmström Room, AHB 1.19, on the first floor of the Arts and Humanities building.