Translators Association

The Translators Association (TA) represents literary translators in the United Kingdom. It is part of the Society of Authors (SoA) and is affiliated with the International Federation of Translators (FIT).

History

The Translators Association (TA) was established in 1958 as a specialist group within the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for professional writers, with a membership of more than 12,000.^[1] The TA provides professional advice, representing individual translators and acting as an advocate for the profession as a whole.

The TA administers prizes for published translations of full-length works of literary merit and general interest from the following languages into English: Arabic, Dutch or Flemish, French, German, modern Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.^[2]

Committee

The TA is run by a committee of seven elected members.^[3] The current committee members are Ian Giles (chair), Isabel del Rio, Paul Russell Garrett, Kathy Saranpa, Nichola Smalley, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, and Roland Glasser (CEATL delegate).^[4]

Previous committee members include Anthea Bell, Peter Bush, Robert Chandler, Charlotte Collins, Howard Curtis, Rebecca DeWald, Kari Dickson, Marta Dziurosz, William Gregory, Daniel Hahn, Rosalind Harvey, Nicky Harman, Rosie Hedger, Sawad Hussain, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Vineet Lal, Natasha Lehrer, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Christina MacSweeney, Ruth Martin, Anju Okhandiar, Clare Richards, Samantha Schnee, Ros Schwartz, Jamie Lee Searle, Trista Selous, Deborah Smith, Ruth Urborn, Helen Wang, Shaun Whiteside (ex-officio).

The TA is coordinated by Catherine Fuller and Ambre Morvan from the SoA.

Activities

Translators Association - A special series curated by Charlotte Collins to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the TA.^[5]

Recent campaigns

Translators on the Cover - An open letter issued by the Society of Authors in September 2021, and signed by authors and translators, to campaign for translators' names to be included on the cover of the works they translate (#TranslatorsOnTheCover in social media).

Administered prizes

• The Vondel Prize (for translation from Dutch)
• The Schlegel-Tieck Prize (for translation from German)
• The Scott Moncrieff Prize (for translation from French)
• The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize (for translation from Arabic)
• The Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation (for translation from German)
• The Hellenic Foundation for Culture Translation Prize (for translation from Greek)
• The Calouste Gulbenkian Prize (for translation from Portuguese)
• The Premio Valle Inclán (for translation from Spanish)
• The Bernard Shaw Prize (for translation from Swedish)