Where Do I Start? A Panel Discussion with Emerging Translators
What does the future of translation look like? Join us for a panel discussion of the problems, frustrations, initiatives, and opportunities facing young and early career translators today, as we welcome three of Oxford’s most brilliant emerging translators: Reuben Woolley, Tayiba Sulaiman, and Vita Dervan. Sharing between them a number of prestigious awards, mentorships, and editorships, our panelists are perfectly placed to shed light on this age-old profession’s twenty-first-century challenges.
Register via Eventbrite, here.
Reuben Woolley received a BA in English and Russian in 2021 and an MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation in 2024 from the University of Oxford. He is a translator from Russian to English and was the recipient of the National Centre for Writing's Emerging Translator Mentorship in Russian for 2020–2021. His translation of Andrey Kurkov's Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv (Hachette, 2023) was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. He is a frequent book reviewer for Rights in Russia, and his translations have been published in Index on Censorship and Cardinal Points, as well as on the websites LeftEast and openDemocracy. He is currently translating Russian journalist and writer Sergey Khazov-Cassia's novel The Gospel According To…, which received an English PEN Translates Award in 2023.
Tayiba Sulaiman has just finished her BA in English and German from St Hilda’s College, Oxford, followed by an Emerging Translators Mentorship in Swiss German with the National Centre for Writing. Having written scripts produced by theatre companies like Take Back, Girl Gang MCR and Hung Theatre, she now mainly writes poetry and non-fiction: her poem ‘Reading’ won the 2021 Eugene Lee-Hamilton Prize. In 2020, she won the Warwick Undergraduate Translation Prize (German), was shortlisted in the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Translation Prize (German) and was commended in the OxOn Poetry Translation Competition (French). She is currently interning at New Books in German.
Vita Dervan received a BA in Italian and Portuguese in 2023 and is currently completing an MSt in Medieval Studies at the University of Oxford. She is a poet and translator. She is a co-founder of RGB Colour Scheme and the Oxford Anthology of Translation (OAT)—a publication dedicated to printing literary translations and writing about translation by student and early-career translators—and an editor at The Burner.
