Each year, a number of $1,000 fellowships are awarded to emerging translators to help them participate in the annual ALTA conference.

At the conference, ALTA Fellows are invited to read their translated work at a keynote event, giving them an opportunity to present their translations to an audience of translators, authors, editors, and publishers from around the world. 

Learn about previous years' fellows here.

Eligibility 

For the ALTA Travel Fellowships, an emerging translator is someone who does not yet have a book-length work of translation published or under contract. ALTA considers chapbooks to be book-length publications for the Travel Fellowships. The ALTA Travel Fellowships are open to individual translators (not teams of co-translators).

Each year, The Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship is preferentially awarded to one emerging translator of color or a translator working from an underrepresented diaspora or stateless language. 

For our other Travel Fellowships, we welcome applicants of all backgrounds, regardless of ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, educational level or professional experience, including those with prior training or experience in non-literary translation; those who are speakers of Indigenous languages; and those who are heritage speakers of languages other than English. While the Travel Fellowships are open to all applicants, we especially encourage applications from translators of color, translators with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ translators.

Please note that translators currently participating in ALTA's Emerging Translator Mentorship Program are not eligible to apply for a Travel Fellowship. Previous years' Fellows are welcome to apply for the Mentorship Program, however.

Questions about Travel Fellowship awards may be directed to Communications and Awards Manager Rachael Daum at rachaeldaum@literarytranslators.org.

Submissions

The 2024 Travel Fellowship awards cycle opened January 16 and will close March 18, 2024.

Applications are accepted through our online form and must include:

• A cover letter explaining your interest in sharing your work with the ALTA community
• Current CV / resumé (list all translation credits, including forthcoming works under contract)
• Up to 10 pages of translated work (single-spaced for poetry or double-spaced for prose)
• The corresponding original language text

Applicants for the Jansen Fellowship should apply using the online ALTA Travel Fellowship application, and check the Jansen Fellowship eligibility box in the application form.

About Peter K. Jansen

Peter K. Jansen (1934-2007) was an eminent scholar and translator of 19th- and 20th-century German literature, and a University of Chicago Professor Emeritus. His remarkable contribution to German literary studies in English both as a scholar and a translator includes three plays by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Though Jansen retired from the University in 1999, he continued his work as an active translator of German and Austrian literature, and become involved in shaping some of the activities of the Goethe Institute of Chicago.