PUBLISHING Scotland has announced that its Translation Fund, designed to support international publishers with the translation of Scottish authors, has once again supported a brilliant array of authors and publishers.
With the help of Creative Scotland, the publishing house has spent £23,000 on 15 international publishers to translate Scottish writing into German, Turkish, French, Danish, Italian, Arabic, Serbian, Macedonian, Hungarian and Portuguese.
The website explains further: “Its purpose is to support publishers based outside the UK to buy rights from Scottish and UK publishers and agents by offering assistance with the cost of translation of contemporary Scottish writers. The funding will be received in the form of a grant.”
This round of funding will see works by Douglas Stuart, Ali Smith, Liz Lochhead and Carol Ann Duffy translated into foreign languages and shared around the globe.
Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain will be translated into Turkish, Serbian, Portuguese and Arabic, while books by Ali Smith and Liz Lochhead will be translated into Hungarian and Italian respectively.
The priority of the fund is to translate contemporary literature, including “fiction, non-fiction, poetry, writing for children and graphic novels”. After a list is created, a panel decides which books make the final cut.
The Translation Fund was first launched in August 2015 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Past works from famous Scots authors such as Maggie O’Farrell, whose book was translated into Dutch, and Denise Mina, whose book was translated into German, have benefited from the fund.
A host of other Scots authors such as Douglas Skelton, David Keenan, Thomas A Clark, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and John Barrington will also be translated.
Full details can be found at www.publishingscotland.org/about-publishing/translation.
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