Founded in 1978, American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is an organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to literary translation. With over 900 members, including individual translators, academic institutions, presses, and others working in literary translation, it aims to bridge cultural communication and understanding among countries and languages through the art and craft of literary translation. The annual ALTA conference is the largest gathering of literary translators in the United States, which brings together nearly 500 attendees each year. The ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program was initiated to establish and facilitate a close working relationship between an experienced translator and an emerging translator on a project selected by the emerging translator. Since its inception in 2015, the program has supported translators from various languages, including Arabic, Norwegian, Chinese, Dutch, Kazakh, Greek, Catalan, French, Korean, Polish, Russian, Singaporean national language, Occitan, and Indonesian.
After the first collaboration with the Taipei Cultural Center in New York, Taiwan's Ministry of Culture, this year, ALTA partners with the Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles to launch the 2022 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship: Literature from Taiwan. The selected emerging translator (someone who has published no more than one full-length work of translation) is expected to choose a project that can be completed during the mentorship with their mentor, and at the conclusion of the mentorship period, the mentee and mentor present their work at the annual ALTA conference in fall of 2022. The relevant fees of the Mentorship Program will be supported by Taiwan's Ministry of Culture at no cost to the mentee. The mentor will be Steve Bradbury, an American translator who taught Modernist literature in Taiwan for many years and translates the work of contemporary Chinese-language poets. His most recent book-length translation, Taiwanese poet Amang’s Raised by Wolves: Poems and Conversations, won the 2021 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
The 2022 Emerging Translator Mentorship Program is now open for online submission until November 30, 2021, at 11:59 pm PT. The program is being offered in 2022 by ALTA in partnership with other international organizations, including Amazon Crossing, Institut Ramon Llull, Literature Translation Institute of Korea, National Arts Council Singapore, Polish Cultural Institute New York, the Russian Federation Institute for Literary Translation, Kulturrådet (Swedish Arts Council), Québec Government Office in New York, and the Yanai Initiative at UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. The mentee will have the opportunity to exchange ideas with international translators and reach out to editors and publishers participating in the ALTA conference for possible publication. All are welcome to apply through ALTA Submittable page by November 30: https://alta.submittable.com/submit. For more information about the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program, please visit: https://literarytranslators.org/mentorships.