British Translation Summer Schools

So, having mouthed off about one translation workshop being too expensive, I shall now proceed to plug two cheaper and shorter ones. Neither of them is particularly short or particularly cheap, however. And unfortunately, they also happen to clash. But I'm guessing not many people want to do two translation workshops in one summer anyway.

The first is organised by Birkbeck College in London as part of its Use Your Language, Use Your English programme. You get five days of translation and editing workshops, with the German group led by Charlotte Ryland, who is excellent and lovely. There will also be publishing people visiting, a dinner, etc. The summer school looks at literary, academic and journalism translation, so has quite a broad base. People I know who took part last year were very impressed with it all. 22-26 July, £ 400 plus travel, food and accommodation costs.

The second is focused entirely on literary translation, at the British Centre for Literary Translation in Norwich. Again, it's five days of translation workshops but this time with the author present and a visiting editor. It'll be me leading the German workshop again, this year working with the delightful Daniela Dröscher as our author. The idea is also that this is an advanced workshop, which is officially described as follows:

In the advanced workshop, participants will focus on consensus translation of a text, with the author present in the room, but the selected text will be particularly challenging for translation. The advanced workshop will also include exercises and discussions on specific aspects of and difficulties in translation from that language.

In other words, we will approach Daniela's texts in a spirit of adventure, and I'm also working on some challenging extras to help us think more deeply about what it is we do as translators (from German) and how we do it. These won't, however, be theory-based. Plus there are all the usual panel discussions, etc. To take part you have to either have attended previously or have some experience of literary translation. I'd be delighted if you'd join me in exploring German-English literary translation - from 21-27 July, £ 550 including fab food and perfectly adequate accommodation or £ 160 for just tuition and lunch. Both plus travel costs.