Articles

Posted by Rosalind Harvey on 3/10/11

Time: September 30th 2011, 9am- 6.30pm
Place: Free Word Centre, London

Themes:

Translation (of course!), dialogue, new initiatives, success, sharing ideas, the importance of readers (thanks to Rachel Van Riel for a highly entertaining presentation that included telling us about the Which Book website, a site that helps you decide which book to read by theme, which has apparently been around 10 years old but which – to my shame – I had never come across. It’s fabulous. Check it out) music, media, digital, festivals, and many, many more.

Action:

Workshops – on ‘Getting started in literary translation’ (this was mine and Nicky’s, and it was standing room only!); literary festivals; the media; funding translations (also a popular one, surprise surprise); education – this one had some rather shocking stats about the decline in foreign language teaching (shame on you, politicians); and minority languages, with Vietnamese poking its head up for possibly the first time this year. There was also much networking, heated debate, exciting discussion of new initiatives, an impromptu performance of a traditional English folk song by an ad hoc choir of translators (you had to be there), and some rather exciting canapes courtesy of the European Commission…

Nicky’s tea quiz proved popular (everyone likes cake – oh, and who was the winner, Nicky?!) and it felt good to be part of such a positive, buzzy event that seemed to have more newcomers this year than ever before – as Daniel Hahn put it as he scanned the packed-out lecture theatre in the morning, ‘There’s so many people here that I don’t know – it’s great!’ Roll on next year.