Panel: Making a Living as a Freelance Translator
As part of the American Literary Translators Association’s 45th annual conference, I’ll be in a panel on “Making a Living as a Freelance Translator” running today at 1pm PST.
Literary translators are notoriously underpaid and undervalued. In this session, four full-time freelancers will discuss what it takes to make a living in a profession with no official minimum rate, how they find paying gigs and diversify their revenue streams, reconcile passion projects with paid ones, and manage to sustain a practice of translation, especially if translation isn’t their only commitment. They will also share resources for self-employed translators, including advice for beginners.
Remember that if you have already paid for an ALTA45 All-Access Registration, you can use the promo code sent to your email to sign up to attend this event at no additional charge. If you are interested in purchasing an ALTA45 Registration to access all our events this year, you can do so at this link.
ALTA members receive 20% off of all tickets and registration using the member promo code. If you need your code, please search your email for "ALTA member promo code" or write to info@literarytranslators.org.
To use your 20% off ALTA member promo code or the 100% off promo code you received when you registered for an all-access pass, click "Tickets" in the event you want to sign up for, then input the code at the top of the list of tickets where it says "Enter promo code" in blue (for reference, see the screenshot at the very bottom of this page). Be sure to click "Apply," and you'll see the price change.
This event will be captioned using Zoom's automatic transcription feature.
All participants in ALTA's 2022 programming agree to abide by and uphold ALTA's Terms and Conditions and Code of Conduct. Email info@literarytranslators.org with questions.
Panelists
Bruna Dantas Lobato (moderator) is a writer and translator living in St. Louis. Her recent translations from Portuguese include Caio Fernando Abreu's seminal story collections Moldy Strawberries and No Dragons in Paradise (Archipelago Books), Stênio Gardel’s novel The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press), and Giovana Madalosso's novel Tokyo Suite (Europa Editions).
Larissa Kyzer is a writer and Icelandic literary translator. Her translation of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s A Fist or a Heart was awarded the American Scandinavian Foundation’s 2019 translation prize. She was Princeton University’s fall 2019 Translator in Residence.
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator working from Arabic, German, and Russian into English. Her translations include books from Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland, and Syria.
A 2021 Guggenheim fellow, Edward Gauvin has translated in various fields from film to fiction, with a personal focus on contemporary comics (BD) and post-Surrealist literatures of the fantastic. The translator of over 400 graphic novels, he is a contributing editor for comics at Words Without Borders.
