The Translators Association (TA) represents literary translators in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. It is part of the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. Membership of the society is open to "anyon ...

(SoA) and is affiliated with the

International Federation of Translators The Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs ( English: International Federation of Translators) is an international federation of associations of translators, interpreters and terminologists working in areas as diverse as literary, scientific ...

(FIT).

History

The Translators Association (TA) was established in 1958 as a specialist group within the

, the UK trade union for professional writers, with a membership of more than 12,000. The TA provides

professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who work (human activity), works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the partic ...

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 Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, Dutch or

Flemish Flemish may refer to: * Flemish, adjective for Flanders, Belgium * Flemish region, one of the three regions of Belgium *Flemish Community, one of the three constitutionally defined language communities of Belgium * Flemish dialects, a Dutch dialec ...

, French,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, modern

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, Portuguese,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, and Swedish.

Committee

The TA is run by a committee of seven elected members. The current committee members are Ian Giles (chair), Isabel del Rio, Paul Russell Garrett, Kathy Saranpa, Nichola Smalley, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, and Roland Glasser (ex-officio). Previous committee members include

Anthea Bell Anthea Bell (10 May 1936 – 18 October 2018) was an English translator of literary works, including children's literature, from French, German and Danish language, Danish. These include ''The Castle (novel), The Castle'' by Franz Kafka, ''Aus ...

, 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.

Recent campaigns

Translators on the Cover - An open letter issued by the

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 Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

Administered prizes

* The Vondel Prize (for translation from Dutch) * The

Schlegel-Tieck Prize The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German Translation is a literary translation award given by the Society of Authors in London. Translations from the German original into English are considered for the prize. The value of the prize is £3,000, while t ...

(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)

References

External links

Translators Association
Literary translators Trade unions in the United Kingdom Translation associations of the United Kingdom Organizations established in 1958 1958 establishments in the United Kingdom {{translation-org-stub