News and Newsletters
Our annual Newsletters give an overview of activities, events and research at the Centre. NEW: our 2024 Newsletter is out now!You can read copies of past Newsletters at the links below: 2023 Newsletter For information about our current activities and upcoming events, please click here. |
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10th Birthday Celebrations, May 2023 |
Provost Linda Doyle was the guest of honour at a celebration held to mark the 10th anniversary since our Centre was launched by the late Seamus Heaney in 2013. We are very grateful to all of our friends, supporters and donors - and to the wider literary translation community - who have helped us in so many different ways, especially since we moved into our beautiful Fenian Street premises five years ago. L-R: Founding director Sarah Smyth, former director Michael Cronin, Provost Linda Doyle and current director, James Hadley. Click here to see more photos of this happy occasion. |
Key Capital Scholarships
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In April 2022 we were delighted to announce the launch of the ‘Key Capital MPhil Scholarships in Literary Translation'. This award-winning course recently opened new certificate and diploma routes, which allow students to take the degree over two or three years, instead of one. Thanks to the generosity of Conor Killeen and Key Capital, these scholarships will be awarded to outstanding applicants to our MPhil course in the coming years.
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Open to translators currently translating a work of Irish literature into French. Our 2022 Visiting French Translation Fellow was Cécile Arnaud, who was based at Trinity College from October to December 2022. Application details for the next Visiting Translation Fellow will be announced in Autumn 2023. |
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2022 Poetry CompetitionEntries are now closed for our 2022 Poetry Translation Competition, sponsored by the Taipei Representative Office in Dublin. The winners will be be discussing their entries at an online event at 1pm on Friday 2 December 2022. All are welcome and admittance is free: click here to book your ticket. .
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Opening of the 'Sarah Smyth Reading Room'
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On 26 April 2022, we opened the Centre's doors after almost two years of lockdown, during which time we hosted all of our events and teaching online. It was fitting that the first opportunity the Centre had to welcome guests was to celebrate two of Trinity’s alumni: Matteo Matubara (see above); and the woman whose tireless efforts brought the Centre into being, Sarah Smyth.
Sarah Smyth studied languages at Trinity College, and later joined the staff of Trinity’s Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies where she taught from 1987-2021. Known and admired by many around College, Sarah developed a reputation for getting things done and, in 2013, with the support of key colleagues (and Provosts!), she founded the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. By 2009, she had already set up a translator-in-residence programme with Literature Ireland, the national agency for the promotion of Irish literature abroad, and Literature Ireland later became one of the Centre's partners. For many years the Centre was largely a concept, but in 2016 it moved into its permanent home, a beautifully restored Georgian building at 36 Fenian Street. World-renowned translation studies scholar, Professor Michael Cronin, took on the directorship of the Centre that year, and the Centre is now a beacon for translation scholars and practitioners around the world, as well as being an important cultural outreach centre for Trinity College and the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. Conor Killeen, Chairman of Key Capital, understood Sarah’s vision for the Centre from the outset and he has been a steadfast supporter of our work since the very early days. Thanks to his and Key Capital’s great generosity, Sarah’s trojan work in setting up the Centre has now been recognised and honoured. The ground floor reception room at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation has been officially named as the “Sarah Smyth Reading Room”. |
May 2021 Eco-Translation: Responding to the Work of Michael Cronin |
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February 2021We hosted the launch of a new translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, 'A Gap in the Clouds' published by Dedalus Press. The Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, Ogura's 100 poems by 100 poets, is one of the most important poetry collections in Japan. |
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July 2020The latest edition of Trinity Alumni News includes an article about our interview with John Banville, here. It also has a piece about 'The Pratchett Project' being led by our Acting Director, Dr James Hadley, see here. |
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April 2020Many congratulations to our Board member Hans-Christian Oeser who has won the prestigious Straelener Übersetzerpreis der Kunststiftung NRW for his translation of Days without End by Sebastian Barry. Chris has translated the work of some of the greatest Irish writers into German, including Brendan Behan, Maeve Brennan, Arthur Conan Doyle, Anne Enright, Hugo Hamilton, Jennifer Johnston, Patrick McCabe, John McGahern, Bernard MacLaverty, Eoin McNamee, John Montague, Peig Sayers, William Trevor and Oscar Wilde, in addition to some of the greats of British and American literature. |
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 L-R:
Mariam Diallo, Cultural Counsellor at the French Embassy in Ireland; Lionel Paradisi-Coulouma, Deputy Head of Mission at the French Embassy in Ireland; Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity College; Mona de Pracontal, translator; Prof. Michael Cronin, Director of Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation; Thierry Lagnau, Director of Alliance Française Dublin. |
French Visiting Translator Fellowship at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural TranslationOn 5 February 2020, the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, the French Embassy in Ireland and Alliance Française Dublin celebrated the launch of a new French Visiting Translator Fellowship. The purpose of this fellowship is to bring translators to Ireland who are translating Irish literature into French. The inaugural French Visiting Translator Fellow is Mona de Pracontal. During her eight-week residency at Trinity College, Mona will be translating Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty, and her translation will be published by Joëlle Losfeld, Gallimard. |
German language residential translation bursaries 2020Literature Ireland and the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation have awarded 8 week residencies to two German language literary translators. These translators will be based at the Centre from February-May 2020. Anna-Nina Kroll (pictured right) used her residency to finish her translation of From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan, which will be published by Diogenes, Zurich. Peter Torberg had planned to use the residency to work on his translation of The Ghosts of Saturday Night by Adrian McKinty, for publication by Suhrkamp Berlin. Unfortunately, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, Peter's residency has been temporarily postponed. |
Anna-Nina Kroll (c) Anja Kootz |
Click here to read the Winter 2019 edition of Trinity College's student run publication 'TJolt' - the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. |
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June 2019 The Ambassador's Chair - University of Leuven Professor Michael Cronin has been appointed to the Ambassador's Chair at the University of Leuven, one of Europe's most prestigious research universities, for the academic year 2019-2020. This chair is granted each year to an internationally leading academic whose research is linked to the research interests of the University of Leuven. In the citation for the award, it stated that Professor Cronin's 'research not only meets the highest international standards in translation studies, French and Irish studies, but in addition raises some of the most challenging issues of our time in the domains of identity construction, sustainability and ecology.' |
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The importance of being earnest in translation by Dr James Hadley, 19 June 2019 What happens to the term “cucumber sandwiches” in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest when it is translated from English to French and from French to Italian? Literary translation researchers and computer scientists at Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University are joining forces to help address the age-old issue of important cultural meaning being diluted in translation. Read more here. |
June 2019 The Italian translation of Professor Michael Cronin's Translation in the Digital Age (La traduzione nell'era digitale) has been published. The translators are Gaia Ballerini and Chiara Denti and the publisher is Morellini Editore. Michael Cronin is 1776 Professor of French and Director of the Trinity Centre for Cultural and Literary Translation. Professor Cronin's work has already appeared in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Polish and Arabic translations. |
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18 May 2018 New literature translations |
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The Future of Translation in Ireland: Translation Studies Network of Ireland (TSNI), First Annual Conference Friday, 18 October 2019, Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin The Call for Papers is now closed. More information about the conference and how to register will be posted on our events page in early September. |
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George Craig, RIP |
March 2019 We were most saddened to learn of the death on 6 March 2019 of George Craig, editor and translator of The Letters of Samuel Beckett from French into English. George Craig was an outstanding translator: born and educated in Ireland, he followed in Beckett’s own academic pathway from Trinity College Dublin to the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris. |
Submissions are open for this term's issue of the student-run Trinity Journal of Literary Translation. The theme for this issue is: Forgotten. Translations of verse and prose into and from all languages, as well as essays and any visual art related to the theme of 'forgotten' may be submitted. The deadline is Monday, 25 February 2019. Please send submissions to trinityjolt@gmail.com. |
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19 December 2018
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The Irish Translators' and Interpreters' Association published a very interesting interview with our founding director, Dr Sarah Smyth, in its December 2018 bulletin. Click here to read it. |
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The Provost's Annual Review 2017-18 has just been published. This is an overview of what has been accomplished at Trinity College throughout the past academic year, and it contains a 'new professor interview' with our Director, Michael Cronin, Professor of French (1776). November 2018. |
| Read a review of Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, the new novel by the Man Booker international Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk. Michael Cronin, The Irish Times, Saturday, 15 September, 2018. |  |
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Michael Cronin launched the new collection of essays Ag Caint leis an Simné: Nualitríocht na Gaeilge agus Dúshlán an Traidisiúinby the well known poet and broadcaster Louis de Paor in the Moore Institute, National University of Ireland on Thursday 13 September. |
| Michael Cronin reviews Found in Translation, a new collection of 100 of the finest short stories ever translated. The Irish Times, 8 September 2018. |  |
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From 'La Bamba' to Houellebecq: Frank Wynne’s linguistic odyssey. Michael Cronin, The Irish Times, 8 July 2018. |
| Official opening of the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, The Irish Times, 25 April 2018. |  |
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