Day of Translation 2026: Call for panel proposals ends May 1
On Thursday, September 24, 2026, Center for the Art of Translation will present the seventh annual Day of Translation, held at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, NY and livestreamed worldwide.
The event connects readers of literary translation; literary translators at every stage of their careers; and anyone interested in the movement of ideas among languages, cultures, people, and places. This day of conversations about language and literature features provocative panels on translation, broadly defined.
This is our second year welcoming panel submissions from our community and we’re very excited to hear your ideas! Our committee is looking to program panels that are approachable to a translation-curious reader, speak to a topic or theme that connects multiple translations across languages and traditions, expand the conversation around human-centered translation, and offer a specific point of view. We’re prioritizing panels that are broad in scope rather than those that highlight one specific publication, publisher, author or language.
The deadline to send your ideas is Friday, MAY 1, 2026. Submit here(opens in a new tab).
Proposal Guidelines:
- Proposals that expand or complicate the idea of translation are often the most engaging for our audience.
- We are explicitly seeking proposals that illuminate a wide range of perspectives, both in terms of participants and subject matter.
- Multilingual panels are welcome.
- The most successful panels are generally limited to 4 or 5 participants, including a moderator; our emphasis is on making sure every voice is heard.
- Proposed panels should aim to be an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes in duration, including a brief audience Q&A.
Staff from the Center for the Art of Translation and The Center for Fiction will review all panel proposals, and accepted panels will be determined by late May 2026. The Center for the Art of Translation will offer round-trip transportation to New York, lodging, and honoraria to accepted panelists.
Are you new to Day of Translation? Check out recordings of last year’s panels to understand the types of content and topics we are seeking.
Panels from the Day of Translation 2025:
Resistance Translation: The Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics of Translating Resistance Literature
How do translators navigate the complex responsibility of serving as political agents while recreating both the aesthetics and the inherent purpose of resistance literature? What strategies enable translators to work toward liberation without catering to colonial tastes? How do you bring Palestinian literature to English readers when those readers are part of the system Palestinian writers are pushing back against?
Panelists: Writer, translator, and performer Stine An, writer and translator Eirill Alvilde Falck, and writer and translator Khaled Rajeh. Moderated by award-winning translator Chenxin Jiang.
Meeting the Present Moment: On Translators Navigating Cultural Taboos, Censorships, and Establishing Solidarity
With the rising number of book bans, political scrutiny of education and libraries, and refugees and migrants in limbo across the United States, how do translators navigate linguistic and ideological borders? What does it mean to translate literature in a time of growing censorship and cultural polarization? How can translators respond to book challenges, publisher hesitations, and various aspects of censorship, including self-censorship?
Panelists: Writer and award-winning translator Anton Hur, writer and Persian translator Parisa Saranj, and writer and translator between Chinese, French, Spanish, and English Jenna Tang.
Interspecies Translation
What is gained in narrating from the perspective of a polar bear, a clam, or famously, a cockroach? This panel explores the idea of “interspecies translation” and how the languages of the animal, aquatic, and otherwise natural world inform the way we approach narrative and storytelling. Is it more freeing to be a clam than a woman? What happens to a polar bear’s voice when it’s translated both across species and across languages? Will we ever be able to understand animal language? Will they ever understand ours?
Participants: Join Susan Bernofsky (translator of Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, New Directions), Bonnie Chau (All Roads Lead to Blood, 2040 Books), Anelise Chen (Clam Down, One World), and Kate Zambreno (Animal Stories, Transit Books). Moderated by Dr. Elisha Cohn (Milieu: A Creaturely Theory of the Contemporary Novel, Stanford University Press).
