The National Centre for Writing is delighted to announce the mentees selected for the 2021-22 Emerging Translator Mentorships Programme.

Every year the programme supports the development of a new cohort of literary translators into English, particularly for languages whose literature is currently under-represented in English translation.

Now in its eleventh year, the scheme was founded by writer, editor and translator Daniel Hahn and is organised by the NCW. It has so far supported 97 translators in more than 30 languages.

Rebecca DeWald, Programme Manager at NCW said:

‘We are very excited about a ‘bumper crop’ of mentorships this year, offering 11 mentees the opportunity to work one-to-one with an experienced literary translator over a six-month period. Our emerging translators hail from the UK to Italy, Ukraine, Russia, the US, Singapore, India and Vietnam, making the mentorships programme a truly international meeting place for budding translators with the shared aim of bringing English-language readers challenging, engaging, and entertaining writing from around the world.’

The winners of the 2021-2022 Emerging Literary Translator Mentorships Programme are:

• Ieva Lakute – Latvian (mentored by Kaija Straumanis)
• Lise Lærdal Bryn – Norwegian (mentored by Kari Dickson)
• Amaryllis Gacioppo – Italian (mentored by Howard Curtis)
• Yuki Tejima –Japanese (mentored by Juliet Winters Carpenter)
• Shanna Tan – Korean (mentored by Anton Hur)
• Jess Jensen Mitchell – Polish (mentored by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
• Irina Sadovina – Russian (mentored by Oliver Ready)
• Astrid Freuler – Swiss German (mentored by Jamie Lee Searle)

This year’s cohort also includes three mentorships specifically aimed at encouraging literary translators currently underrepresented in the industry. Two Visible Communities mentorships – designed to support one UK-based Black or Brown literary translator, and one UK-based literary translator from the diaspora, heritage, or community languages of the UK – are awarded to:

• Salma Harland – Arabic (mentored by Sawad Hussain)
• Csilla Toldy – Hungarian (mentored by Meena Kandasamy).

The British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) and British Council mentorship, which supports a literary translator currently resident in a country on the OECD list of countries qualifying for Official Development Assistance, is awarded to:

• Hanna Leliv – Ukranian (mentored by Canan Marasligil)

Two runners up, Umesh Kumar and Quyen Nguyen-Hoang, will also receive digital mentoring sessions with award-winning French translator Ros Schwartz.

Each mentee will be matched up with an experienced translator for a six-month period during which they work together on practical translation projects, developing their craft through working on a chosen text or texts.