June 2026 Translation News Roundup
Our monthly roundup of literary translation news and opportunities.
News:
Wasafiri Magazine announced their Languages of Resistance: Indigenous Poetics Workshop Series of online translation workshops(opens in a new tab) led and curated by Wasafiri’s Translator in Residence (Endangered Languages), Juana Adcock. Sessions start June 30.
The Offing Magazine has extended their call for translation poetry submissions. The deadline is June 30. See the guidelines and submissions page here.(opens in a new tab)
Prizes:
The International Booker Prize 2026 has announced its winner(opens in a new tab). Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, is the first book translated from Mandarin Chinese to win the prize.
Wasafiri Magazine is offering 150 fee waivers for submissions to the 2026 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize(opens in a new tab). If you are a low-/no-income writer or translator hoping to enter for this year’s prize, email wasafirinewwritingprize@qmul.ac.uk(opens in a new tab) with the subject line “Fee Waiver” and your country of residence, and they will share the next steps. The submissions window for the waiver is June 1, 9:00 am BST, until June 14, 11:59 pm BST, and the prize submission deadline is June 30.
The American–Scandinavian Foundation awards four translation prizes(opens in a new tab) for outstanding translations of poetry, fiction, drama, or literary prose written by a 20th- or 21st-century Nordic author. The deadline to apply is September 15.
Recommended reads:
“Carvalho’s empathetic concern extends beyond the heteronormative household, devoting several stories to the anguish of older women who are sidelined by society, deemed superfluous and embarrassing because they remain unmarried.” Mandy-Suzanne Wong reviews And How Have You Been? for Asymptote Journal(opens in a new tab).
“Xu Zechen’s woeful narrator has only ever wanted to escape from his two-bit hometown and the third-rate university cementing its provincial status; instead, he tells a shocking untruth to get out of town and finds the consequences of his misbehavior have cemented him in place even further. When everyone already believes you to be either a liar or a killer (for his lie was about a murder), it can be tempting to turn that oh-so-damaging lie into truth.” Night Train featured in the CrimeReads(opens in a new tab) roundup of the Best International Fiction of May.
“When I’m translating, I always imagine the author across the table from me, telling me the story in Korean. I never feel alone when I translate, and by the end of the book I feel as if the author and I have been sitting and working together for a long time.” Anton Hur writes on the future of literary translation for Literary Hub.(opens in a new tab)
“I began writing and translating poetry when I was seven years old through Poetry Inside Out. These early experiences were formative. Over the years, my commitment to literature deepened as I studied the craft of poetry and literary translation, eventually graduating college with a concentration in creative writing. Now, as an educator, I continue to bring poetry into the classroom.” Caroline Woods-Mejía, a 2025–27 Poetry Inside Out Fellow and educator at Piedmont Middle School in California, talks about the ways CAT’s education program influenced her perspective on translation. Read the full interview here.
