The Translation Exchange supports regular residencies in Oxford for a translator, or for a writer/poet and their translator. The residency is an opportunity for the visitors to work and collaborate, but also to deliver masterclasses, workshops and talks, interacting with students and the public.
The Visible Translator: Polly Barton in Oxford, 2022-23
The Translation Exchange was delighted to run a unique Residency in 2022-2023, in partnership with TORCH and the Humanities Cultural Programme, literary charity the Stephen Spender Trust, and award-winning translators Daniel Hahn and Ros Schwartz.
In 2022/23, the award-winning writer and translator Polly Barton joined us as a Humanities Cultural Programme Visiting Fellow. Hosted by the Queen’s College Translation Exchange, Polly delivered events with students, researchers and public audiences centred on the theme of the “The Visible Translator”. Making acts of translation visible and accessible to new audiences, the residency aimed to encourage interdisciplinary, dynamic and creative thinking around translation across the Humanities and beyond.
As a Visiting Fellow, Polly facilitated workshops and seminars designed to raise the profile of translation as a shared critical practice across the university and expand opportunities for future collaboration and research.
Central to the residency is a move beyond the university. Partnering with local schools, museums and other cultural organisations, Polly developed a range of innovative and participatory public-facing activities, including a “Translating Comics” workshop and a translation slam at Oxford Literary Festival, designed to make the translation process visible and interactive.
The residency forms part of a new national translator-in-residence scheme, developed by a range of partners across the UK and led by translators Daniel Hahn OBE and Ros Schwartz. The scheme is set to run in a consortium of Universities and Literature Development Agencies, including Durham and Aston Universities, New Writing North and Writing West Midlands. The pilot in Oxford contributed to the development of a sustainable national model for future translation residencies, and supports efforts across the UK to diversify curricula, research and literary translation.
Polly Barton is a critically-acclaimed writer and translator of Japanese literature and non-fiction. In 2019, she was awarded the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for her non-fiction debut Fifty Sounds (Fitzcarraldo Editions/Liveright). Her recent translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press, 2017), There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury, 2020), and So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo (Arcade, 2021). In 2021, she won the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection for her translation of Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull Press, 2020).
The Translation Exchange was supported by a TORCH Micro-Fund Grant to develop the scheme in Oxford. The residency ran in partnership with the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages (Oxford).
News from the Residency
Collaboration Reigns at Polly Barton’s Translation Masterclass.
Locating Japanese Translation with Polly Barton
Former Residents
During the COVID-19 pandemic the Residency became virtual. The 2020–2021 Residency, in partnership with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, was awarded to South Korean Bora Chung (shortlisted for the International Booker Prize) and translator Anton Hur. Explore a reading by Bora Chung, as well as a two-part workshop (part 1 and part 2) by Anton Hur translating a supposedly ‘untranslatable’ poem, recorded during the Residency.
In partnership with Pushkin House, London, the 2019-2020 Residency was awarded to Russian writer based in Ukraine Galina Rymbu, and translator Helena Kernan. Read Helena Kernan’s account of the Residency, and explore one of Rymbu’s many poetic projects online.
Our inaugural Residency, in 2018–2019 was offered in partnership with the John Rutherford Centre for Galician Studies to Galician writer Chus Pato, and translator Erín Moure. Explore Pato’s poetry in Moure’s translation here.
Where next?
The Translation Exchange