NEW! 2025 French Visiting Translator Fellowship

We are delighted to announce our 2025 Visiting Translator Fellowship, generously sponsored by the French Embassy in Ireland. These prestigious fellowships are awarded to practising literary translators who are working on the translation of a work of literature by an Irish author into French. Fellowships typically last eight weeks and include travel to and from Dublin, living expenses and accommodation at Trinity College, as well as a dedicated workspace at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. Fellows have access to the library of Trinity College Dublin, and to a wide range of facilities at the University, contact with members of the academic staff, free attendance at a range of events across the university, and especially at Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. During their residency, Translation Fellows are asked to devote themselves to their work as literary translators, become active members of Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, and to use the Centre as their main work base. They interact with the wider College community, take part in public events organised by Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation and the French Embassy, and join classes with post-graduate students in literary translation. At end of their stay, Translation Fellows are asked to showcase their translation work at a public event hosted by Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. They may also return to Dublin to launch the publication of their book at the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation. Translation Fellows are responsible for obtaining any necessary documents/visas to come to Ireland, and for obtaining international health and travel insurance. Fellows must comply with all vaccination and quarantine requirements set by the Irish Government and/or Trinity College Dublin.

The 2025 Fellowship is scheduled to take place from late January 2025. You can find more information about how to apply here. The deadline for applications is 1st December 2024.

About the Fellowship

In February 2020, Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, the French Embassy in Ireland and Alliance Française Dublin celebrated the launch of a French Visiting Translator Fellowship. The purpose of this fellowship is to bring translators to Ireland who are translating Irish literature into French.

Mona de Pracontal © Nutan Photography

Our inaugural French Visiting Translator Fellow was Mona de Pracontal. During her eight-week residency at Trinity College, Mona worked on her translation of  Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty, which has since been published by Joëlle Losfeld at Gallimard. Mona de Pracontal graduated in English language and American Studies in Paris, and studied film history and film-making at Columbia University and The City College of New York. She started translating when she was a student and has not stopped since, with forays into the film industry and, more recently, conference interpreting. Her major translations include works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hannah Tinti, Cynan Jones, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Rick Riordan, Frank Baum, Melvin Burgess, Howard Norman, Kaye Gibbons, Hanif Kureishi, and Conor O'Callaghan. She has also translated non-fiction by William Burroughs and Gloria Steinem. In 2009, she was awarded the Baudelaire Prize for literary translation for her translation of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Prix de Traduction de la Fondation Irlandaise 2019 for her translation of Nothing on Earth by Conor O'Callaghan.

Cécile Arnaud, 2023 Fellow

In October 2022, after a break imposed by the global pandemic, we were delighted to welcome translator Cécile Arnaud to Trinity College for eight weeks. During her time here, Cécile worked on her translation of Spies in Canaan by David Park, for publication by Les Editions de la Table Ronde. In 2022, she translated Park’s previous book, Travelling in a Strange Land, his first book published in France. Her translation, Voyage en territoire inconnu, was nominated for the Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors’ Literary Award in 2023. Cécile graduated from Sciences Po-Paris and has a Master’s degree in English Studies from La Sorbonne. After her studies, she worked for 10 years in publishing before becoming a full-time literary translator. She has translated the work of several Irish writers, including Paula McGrath, Sinéad Gleeson and Molly Keane, as well as work by American novelists Alice McDermott, Katherine Mosby, Elizabeth Brundage and Robert Littell, and English writer Elizabeth Jane Howard. She was awarded the Baudelaire prize for literary translation in 2011 for her translation of The Long Song by Andrea Levy. She has also tutored on the Master’s degree in literary translation at Paris-Diderot University.

Laetitia Devaux, 2024 Fellow

Our 2024 Visiting Translation Fellow, Laetitia Devaux, spent eight weeks at the Centre in February and March. During her residency, Laetitia worked on her translation of Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. She was working under top-secret conditions, as the French translation was due for publiction by Gallimard on the same date as the book was published in English in September 2024. Laetitia had previously translated Rooney's Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You? into French. Laetitia studied French and English literature at Paris Cité University and at Trinity College. She has translated many novels by writers including Eimear McBride, Ali Smith Zadie Smith and Vivian Gornick. She has translated work by Sebastian Barry, including Days Without End, A Thousand Moons and Old God's Time. In September 2023, she joined us for a celebration of Sebastian Barry's work in translation, in an event organised to mark European Day of Languages and International Translation Day. You can see a recording of this event here.

Literature Ireland Translation Residencies

For many years, Literature Ireland and Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation co-hosted a translator-in-residence at Trinity College Dublin. A bursary was awarded to a practising literary translator of established track record working on a translation of a work of contemporary Irish literature. Travel and living expenses were covered by Literature Ireland, while accommodation and work space are provided by the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, Trinity College Dublin. Literature Ireland continues to run its residency programme - you can find more details on their website.

Previous translators-in-residence at the Centre include:

2020 Europe (German language) Anna-Nina Kroll (February-March 2020) worked on her translation of From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan. She has translated all of Ryan's other work into German. During Anna-Nina's residency, her translation of Milkman by Anna Burns was published.	Anna-Nina Kroll
2019, Japan Prof. Hiroko Mikami spent 4 months at the Centre. During her residency, she translated two of Tom Murphy's plays, Brigit and The House, into Japanese. Both are to be pubpublication in Tokyo in 2020.	Hiroko Mikami
2018, China Yiming Jin translated Maeve Brennan's short story collection The Springs of Affection into Chinese during her residency.	Yiming Jin
2017, Brazil During her time in Ireland, Débora Landsberg translated Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney. She has also translated work by writers including Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Anne Enright and Joyce Carol Oates.	Débora Landsberg (interview)
2016, Argentina "Translating James Stephens’ The Insurrection in Dublin on location, only metres away from where the book was written and where the action took place, with the celebrations of the 1916 centenary in full swing all around me, has been a rare and privileged experience."	Matías Battistón
2014-2015, Turkey	Fuat Sevimay
2013-2014, China	Huiyi Bao
2012-2013, Brazil	Guilherme da Silva Braga
2011-2012, China	Jian Lu (Jenny Lu) Jianing Zhou
2010-2011, Russian Federation	Vladimir Babkov

Click here for more information about applying for the 2020 bursary.

"I was a Translator in Residence at the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation for two and a half weeks in May 2017. It was a great experience: the accommodation was satisfactory and the budget provided was more than enough to tour Dublin and Ireland, which is what I predominantly did. Basically, you get a free rein, so you can either travel, make new friends and connections, or work on your translations, if you get time to relax at Tyrone Guthrie Centre in the Irish countryside. All in all, the good people at Literature Ireland and Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation do their best to make your stay as enjoyable as possible." Stefan Pajović (Summer 2017)

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