It’s August, which means it’s Women in Translation Month! Created in 2014, this initiative highlights the work of women writers and translators around the world. Although August may be drawing to a close, it’s never too late to mark the occasion! Here are a few ways to celebrate the many creative, multitalented and often award-winning women in translation, today and every day of the year.
Discover the work of women translators and writers in their own words. For this year’s edition of WIT Month, Book*hug Press and Asymptote have each published a series of interviews shining a spotlight on women in translation, among them LTAC members Aimee Wall and Jessica Moore. To read their thoughts on the joys and challenges of translation and find excerpts of their work, visit the Book*hug and Asymptote websites.
Read a translation by an LTAC member. With women making up a large part of LTAC’s 200+ strong membership, there is a plethora of poetry and prose translated by our very own women members to choose from. Check out the Member Dispatches page for the latest news about our members’ projects, including recent translations by Arianne Des Rochers, Catherine Ego, Sonya Malaborza, Karen Simon, and others.
Read a translation of a woman author. While Women in Translation Month has grown to encompass the work of women translators, its original intent was to draw attention to the gender gap faced by non-Anglophone women authors; a mere 30% of works chosen for translation into English are written by women. To delve deeper into translated literature written by women authors (though not necessarily translated by women), this reading list compiled by WIT Month founder Meytal Radzinski is a great place to start.
Join the conversation on social media. Use the #WITmonth and #womenintranslation hashtags on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to discover even more reading recommendations and interviews with women translators and authors – or to share your own!
Happy reading!
Julia Jones is a Montréal-based emerging literary translator. Her literary projects include a co-translation of Mauve Motel, a series of epistolary exchanges between Simon Dumas and Nicole Brossard, and her ongoing translation of Hivernages by Maude Deschênes-Pradet.
