What Would You Get from a 2015 ALTA Fellowship?

The American Literary Translators Association is looking for a few (more) emerging translators to apply for its travel Fellowship:

The ALTA Travel Fellowship supports emerging translators in coming to the 2015 ALTA conference, set for October 28-31 in Tuscon, USA, with a $1,000 cash award toward travel expenses.

According to ALTA Managing Director Erica Mena, “Coming to the ALTA conference is a formative and valuable experience for translators at any stage of their career, but especially so for emerging translators.”

The travel fellowship doesn’t just support travel; travel fellows have a special status at the conference. Mena:

Fellows are paired with an established translator with whom they meet at the conference, who is available to them to answer questions and provide advice about their work. At the conference, the fellows give a reading, and have the opportunity to meet with editors, publishers, and other translators. These relationships are extremely valuable, especially for translators working from under-represented languages who face problems of visibility already.

Past fellows include Arabic-English translator Alice Guthrie, who wrote about her experience on the ALTA blog.

There’s room for up to six fellows, and there have been very few applicants thus far. If you’re interested, you can apply through the ALTA website before June 1.

According to the site, applications must include:

• a cover letter explaining your interest in attending the conference
• current CV / resumé
• up to 10 pages of translated work (poetry or prose, double spaced)
• the corresponding original language text