Oxford Translation Day 2025
Friday 13th June
18:00-19:00
Ten Versions of Kafka, in partnership with AHRC-funded Kafka's Transformative Communities
Taylor Institution
Register via Eventbrite, here.
Maïa Hruska's prize-winning book Dix versions de Kafka asks what happens to a writer's work when it is translated, especially when his name is Franz Kafka. In the mid-1920s, ten writers brought his works to life outside the language and place where he had conceived them, saving them from the oblivion to which authoritarian regimes had condemned them. Exploring how Kafka became Kafka, these stories of translation are also stories of discovery, censorship, political struggle, and liberation.
Join post-doctoral research fellow Ian Ellison in conversation with author Maïa Hruska at the Taylor Institution, followed by audience Q&A and drinks reception.
Maïa Hruska is a graduate of Cambridge University and King's College London, and having also studied at Sciences Po Paris and now works at the Wylie publishing house in London. She collaborated with the daily newspaper L'Opinion when it was launched.
Saturday 14th June
09:30-10:45
Creative Workshop: Manifestos for Activism in Translation
Seminar Room 9, St Anne’s College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
In this creative workshop, participants will put together mini manifestos for themselves on the subject of activism in translation. Whether they are practising translators, or avid readers of translated literature, this session will be an opportunity to reflect on their positioning and the things they might do to engage and resist, actively and consciously, in the social, political and economic dynamics of literary translation.
The session will open with a discussion on the practical aspects of activism in translation, to support participants in identifying the ways they might want to bring activism into their reading and writing of translations. This might relate to linguistic and creative choices, or the selection of texts to read and translate, the publishers they work with and buy from, for example. Participants will then be able to make zine-style manifestos for themselves, using an array of fun, colourful materials to inspire them. There will also be photocopies of websites, articles and social media posts from translators and organisations working on these issues, which will be used for the discussion and which participants way wish to quote from or cut up and stick into their mini manifestos.
Alyssa Ollivier-Tabukashvili is a current DPhil student at the University of Oxford. Her thesis addresses the need and potential for decolonising literary translation, with a focus on francophone Algerian writing, through the subjects of World Literature, plurilingualism, and transnational feminism in conversation with the activist role of the translator and the pursuit of justice. More broadly, she is interested in literature and expressions of resistance from the Maghreb and southern/eastern Africa, including its queer and feminist intersections. She has been awarded the 2025 Javett-UP BRIDGE Fellowship, where she will be researching artistic and literary representations of the self in cross-temporal and transnational resistance movements.
"The One Who Has Arrived Late": Bengali Translation Workshop
Seminar Room 7, St Anne’s College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
In this workshop, we will collaboratively translate a Bengali poem into English with a focus on translating emotions and affect. The poem in focus moves between different affective registers, among them irritation, grief, love, longing, and accrues around the act of waiting. How do we work through these registers and move them across languages? No prior knowledge of Bengali is required.
Utsa Bose is a second year DPhil candidate in History at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on infectious diseases and pandemics in colonial South Asia between the late-19th/early 20th centuries. He was also the Graduate Teaching Assistant for the MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation (CLCT) between 2023-2024. He enjoys translating and writing fiction, and his translations have appeared in journals such as Asymptote, while his original fiction has been published by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.
11:00-12:15
Translating Multilingual Literature: Workshop with Dr Sheela Mahadevan
Seminar Room 8, St Anne's College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
This workshop is open to translators translating from any language. We will explore different forms of literary multilingualism and consider a range of strategies which can be used to translate multilingual texts. Drawing on various existing translations of multilingual texts, we will consider questions such as: what does it mean to erase the multilingualism of the source text, and what are the implications of using italics, footnotes and glossaries when translating multilingual texts? How and why might one compose a multilingual translation?
Dr Sheela Mahadevan is Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Liverpool. She is translator of a multilingual Francophone novel Lakshmi’s Secret Diary by Ari Gautier (Columbia University Press, 2024) and author of the monograph Writing between Languages: Translation and Multilingualism in Indian Francophone Writing (Bloomsbury, forthcoming August 2025).
Translating Onomatopoeia: Creative Translation Workshop with Polly Barton, in partnership with the Queen’s College Translation Exchange
Seminar Room 8, St Anne's College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
What are the possibilities and limits of translating onomatopoeia and language with onomatopoeic qualities? This workshop, led by award-winning writer and translator Polly Barton, will consider the questions and challenges that arise when onomatopoeia is moved across languages and cultures. From translations of Japanese mimetic language to creative and multilingual reimaginings of onomatopoeia in English, participants will explore the phonic properties and potentialities of language and translation.
No prior knowledge of Japanese, or any other language, is required. This workshop is in partnership with the Queen’s College Translation Exchange.
Polly Barton is a Japanese translator and writer. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai. Her translation of Asako Yuzuki’s Butter was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2024. She is the author of Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History.
12:30-13:30
Starting Out in Translation Studies: Early Career Reflections
Seminar Room 7, St Anne’s College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
What does it mean to begin a career in translation studies today, amid a shifting academic landscape and increasing precarity in the humanities? In this roundtable, early career scholars reflect candidly on their journeys into the field - sharing insights into job applications, research proposals, interdisciplinary positioning, and the challenges and opportunities of working in translation at a time of institutional change. Each speaker will offer a short reflection before opening up to audience questions and wider discussion. This is an event for anyone considering a future in translation studies, or simply curious about what that future of the field might look like.
14:00-15:15
Between Tongues: Poetry and Self-Translation in Celtic Languages
Tsuzuki Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
This roundtable brings together three contemporary poets who write and translate their own work in Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, navigating the creative and political terrain of composing between languages. Through readings and conversation, the poets will explore what it means to carry a poem across linguistic boundaries when both tongues are their own - and when those tongues carry the weight of marginalisation, revival, and cultural memory. Audiences will hear poems in both original and translated form, followed by a discussion on identity, poetics, and the responsibilities of self-translation in the context of Celtic and Indigenous British languages.
15:30-16:30
In Conversation: Polly Barton and Monica Cure
Tsuzuki Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Monica Cure (writer, scholar, and guest judge of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize) joins award-winning translator and author Polly Barton to explore translation as a form of activism, resistance, and care. Drawing on their work across genres and languages, the speakers will reflect on the ethics of voice, the politics of representation, and the translator’s role in unsettling dominant narratives. This is a chance to hear two leading voices in contemporary translation thinking aloud about the possibilities, and responsibilities, of their craft.
Polly Barton is a Japanese translator and writer. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai. Her translation of Asako Yuzuki’s Butter was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2024. She is the author of Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History.
Monica Cure is a Romanian-American writer, poet, literary translator, and dialogue specialist. She is a two-time Fulbright grantee and the author of the book Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century (University of Minnesota Press). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Salamander, and Graywolf Lab and her poetry translations have been published internationally in Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of Liliana Corobca’s novel, The Censor’s Notebook (Seven Stories Press UK). Her translation of Corobca’s novel Too Great a Sky was shortlisted for the 2025 EBRD Literature Prize. She is currently based in Bucharest.
16:45-18:00
“This is Why”: Translators on Translating, Editors on Editing
Seminar Room 7, St Anne's College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
Join acclaimed literary translators who have featured on prestigious shortlists and longlists and their editors to hear more about the practices and choices in producing and publishing translated literature. They will discuss a short poem or passage that they have recently translated or edited and give the audience insight into the “hows” and “whys” of their approach.
18:30-19:45
Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize Short List Readings and Prize-Giving
Tsuzuki Lecture Theatre, St Anne’s College
Register via Eventbrite, here.
The Oxford–Weidenfeld Prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It was founded by Lord Weidenfeld and is supported by New College, The Queen’s College, and St Anne’s College, Oxford. This celebration of literary translation will feature readings from the work of the shortlisted translators, and the presentation of the prize.
