Anne Thompson Melo: “I’m so glad I decided to go to that first workshop”

In April, translator Anne Thompson Melo was awarded the Pereine Stevns Translation Prize 2024. Anne got back into translation from Dutch through a series of translations workshops organized by New Dutch Writing and Flip through Flanders since 2019 to promote Dutch literature in translation in the UK and Ireland and to nurture the next generation of translators. Anne's experience shows how much of an impact these workshops can have.

“I first heard about the online New Dutch Writing/Flip Through Flanders workshops on social media during lockdown. I studied Dutch and German at university over 20 years ago, wrote a PhD on children’s literature and stumbled into translation after being offered a temporary job translating a technical manual about circuit diagrams. I’ve gradually managed to steer towards more creative work over the years and have always been interested in literary translation but, until lockdown, when everything went online, the costs of attending workshops had felt a bit prohibitive.”

“The format is that you’re sent a short text to translate beforehand and then we compare results and discuss the challenges during the online workshop. The first one I did (fiction), back in 2020, was with Sam Garrett, where we worked on a passage from Manon Uphoff’s ‘Vallen is als vliegen’. Given how rusty my Dutch was at that point, it felt very much like being thrown in at the deep end. But I really enjoyed the challenge, and the workshop helped me see that literary translation might be a possibility. Other workshops followed and I tried a range of different genres:

• nonfiction (Raoul de Jong’s ‘Jaguarman’, led by David McKay),
• children’s/YA literature (Maren Stoffels’ ‘No Exit’, led by Laura Watkinson),
• graphic novels (Sabien Clement and Mieke Versyp’s ‘Vel’, led by Anna Asbury and Laura Vroomen).

The workshops are free, which is amazingly generous, and I’d recommend them to anyone who’s interested in literary translation.

“Taking part in the workshops inspired me to have a go at a few literary translation competitions. And all that practice paid off! I was longlisted for the John Dryden Translation Prize in 2022, shortlisted for the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation in 2023, and in 2024 I won the Peirene Stevns Translation Prize, which was set up by Peirene and Martha Stevns to provide an opportunity for translators who haven’t yet published a full work of fiction. They choose a work from a different language each time.”

With the chosen text being Dutch this year, the prize was also supported by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Centre of Expertise for Literary Translation (ELV). The set passage for 2024 was from Eva Meijer’s ‘Zee nu’, and I absolutely loved it. In it, a government minister gets a taxi to Scheveningen to see the rising tide for himself. The passage was only a few pages long but gave a fantastic impression of the book’s themes and style – the impending disaster, the government’s reluctance to act, very Dutch cultural references (krokets!), the poetry of the sea and the natural world, all interspersed with a wonderfully dry humour. It was a joy to work on. I was so thrilled when they called to tell me I’d won. It’s a huge opportunity and I’m so grateful – and so glad I decided to go to that first workshop back in 2020.

“I’m also hugely grateful to Flanders Literature for allowing me to spend two weeks at the Translators’ House in Antwerp back in May. I managed to get a lot of work done on the book and also met up with my mentor Michele – in Scheveningen, where it seemed only right that we ordered krokets. The Translators’ House has an amazing library of Flemish books, so it was a great opportunity to read up on a whole range of different authors. I also met some of the Translators Week participants, when I joined them one afternoon for a tour of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and fascinating talks by Annelies Verbeke and Geert Sels.”

“My translation needs to be finished by the end of the year, and the book is due to be published late next year by Peirene (UK) and Two Lines (US). And then more of the same would be nice! I tend to read a wide range of books – contemporary fiction, children’s literature, YA fiction, crime stories, historical novels, literary nonfiction – whatever I’m in the mood for. I do love books with strong narrative voices and deadpan humour. And, having focused on children’s literature and YA fiction for my PhD, that’s an area I’m particularly interested in translating. My commercial translation work has more or less vanished with the increasing use of AI and, much as I love translation, I was in the process of applying for full-time jobs in other fields when I got the call from Peirene. So now I suppose I’m looking for a part-time job and more books to translate.”

Other participants are also happy to talk about the impact of the translation workshops.

Hanna Wheeler participated in four different translation workshops in 2023: two on non-fiction, one about children’s and youth literature, and one with a focus on graphic novels. “I haven’t really been a full-time translator for that long – and now literary translation has taken me down a whole new path altogether. That has made each workshop a bit of a revelation. The workshops gave me a chance to gently put my skills to the test and I was able to sample a different genre every time. During each session, the workshop leaders shared very creative ideas about translating, asked the group thought-provoking questions, highlighted certain translation choices the participants had made, and offered us practical tips on working as a literary translator.”

“I also finally got to meet some colleagues during the workshops! I don’t have a traditional academic background in translation and I also don't live in a country where my source language is spoken. That makes it so that fellow translators are few and far between and this work can be a little lonely at times. But now I have an entire professional network!

“In each subsequent workshop, I discovered more and more excitement for this craft. And I’m still hungry for more! I’m anxiously awaiting the workshops that are happening this fall. Without this workshop series, I might never have known about the BCLT Summer School, a wonderful week of professional development for translators that I was able to attend with support from Flanders Literature. And without the experiences I had during the workshops and the encouragement of the facilitators, I'm not sure I would have found the courage to pursue an accreditation with Flanders Literature. Taking part in these workshops has absolutely boosted my self-confidence and strengthened my trust in my instincts as a translator.”