Call for Proposals

We hope this theme will spark conversations around, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Sustainable translation practices, including financial, emotional, and creative
• Collective approaches to sustainability, such as co-translation, workshops, and organizing
• Power imbalances involved in translation, such as determining which languages or authors get translated
• Ethical choices involved in translating from minority languages that are less well represented in the Anglosphere
• Translation as a practice for recovering heritage or colonized languages 
• Reciprocity as a process or place for making space for difference, without fetishizing or smoothing it over
• Translation as a host-guest relationship, and/or as a practice of hospitality
• Translation as a marketplace, commons, or bazaar: a place for reciprocal exchange
• Sustainability of translation in the AI-age

This year’s conference theme seeks to celebrate what translation makes possible, question the structures that limit it, and consider what would make the work more sustainable and the exchange more just. Join us in exploring these themes collectively and help shape the discussion around the give-and-take of literary translation.

Participation:

• Participants are limited to taking part in TWO conference events, including: panels, workshops, and/or bilingual readings.
• All participants (panelists, moderators, workshop leaders and participants, and readers) must purchase a registration to take part in the ALTA conference. Presenter registrations help ALTA cover the cost of putting on our programming. If you are interested in our discounted registration options through our lottery and our work exchange program, please plan ahead, as the deadlines are in the summer.
• While you must be a current ALTA member to submit a proposal, participants in sessions need not be members.
• Per our Terms and Conditions, we are generally unable to include remote panel/workshop participants, though special petitions for virtual presentations in cases of last-minute emergency will be considered.
• We welcome everyone to our conference and are committed to making our programming accessible, and to making arrangements that allow all attendees to participate in the conversation. Please see our Accessibility web page for more information or contact Senior Program Director Kelsi Vanada with questions at kelsi@literarytranslators.org.

Content:

• Proposals may demonstrate a connection to the conference theme.
• The ALTA Conference Committee especially encourages proposals featuring languages traditionally underrepresented at ALTA.
• ALTA is committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion in our community and programming and to modeling those values as we support and advocate for translators. We are interested in sessions that explicitly engage with these values, and that support inclusive participation across lines of race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, nationality, age, and religion.
• In accordance with ALTA conference policy, we ask that participants not read papers at panels or workshops. Rather, participants prepare talking points and examples based in the practice of literary translation.
• Sessions with a limited focus on a press, publication, or organization tend not to be competitive and should seek a featured sponsorship instead. Please contact Senior Program Director Kelsi Vanada at kelsi@literarytranslators.org to discuss these opportunities.
• Looking for inspiration? Check out past ALTA virtual session recordings in our video library.

Submissions:

• You must be an active member for your proposal to be considered. Check your membership status or join today.
• You will be able to edit what you submitted until June 15, 2026, through the link in the Google form confirmation you receive by email.  No changes can be made after June 15.
• Panel and workshop decisions will be sent out in July 2026. If your panel or workshop is accepted, it will automatically be programmed!
• Questions may be sent to ALTA Senior Program Director Kelsi Vanada at kelsi@literarytranslators.org.

Sessions may be proposed with incomplete lineups, and ALTA members will be allowed to reach out to organizers to put themselves forward to join as moderators, panelists, or workshop leaders. We’re offering this option in an effort to make proposing a session more equitable, and more possible for those who are newer to our organization or may not have an extensive network of contacts.

Sessions with incomplete lineups that are accepted will be shared with our membership in mid-July. Interested presenters will be able to contact session organizers by email to put themselves forward to join the session by July 29. Session organizers will then have until July 30 to send final lineups to ALTA staff.

Panels involve between 3-5 presenters sharing about a topic. A proposal that’s all about getting interesting people with interesting ideas together in a room, talking with each other and letting the discussion evolve organically, will be more successful than a proposal that sets itself forward as a chance for panelists to share about their own research or projects. ALTA sessions are meant to spark thoughtful, lively discussion between panelists and audience. To that end, participants are asked not to read papers during their session. ALTA values sessions involving audience interaction, so plan on devoting a significant portion, or at least 15 minutes, of the 75-minute block to Q&A.

Panel Proposals must include the following:
(Please have these elements ready at the time of submission.)

• Title: 70 characters or fewer;
• Organizer Information: name, email address, and 400-character bio for panel organizer (NOTE the panel organizer must be a current ALTA member in order to propose a panel, and organizers may only propose ONE panel or workshop);
• Participant Information*: names, email addresses, phone numbers, and 400-character bios for the moderator and panelists (the organizer may be one of the participants); *NOTE that if you are proposing an incomplete panel (see dropdown) you need not include participant names;
• Description: a final description (800 characters or fewer) of the panels, which will be used on the event page;
• Session Tags: you will have the opportunity to share whether your session fits into certain categories, and which languages are represented (this aids conference organizers in creating the schedule but has no bearing on acceptance);
• Scheduling requests: share any known conflicts for any of your panelists between October 22-24, 9:00am to 5:00pm. We will make every effort to accommodate your requests, but we can make no guarantees;
• A/V requests: Audiovisual equipment will be limited for ALTA49 sessions. If you would like to request A/V equipment, please be prepared to share your requests in the form. Be sure to specify your needs (projector and screen, etc). ALTA will not be able to meet all requests. Please only request A/V if it is integral to your session (that is, your session relies heavily on the visual). Please note that you may NOT bring your own A/V equipment, per our contract with the Marriott.
• Acknowledgment of registration: by proposing a panel for ALTA49, you understand that you and your fellow presenters must all purchase ALTA49 registration.

Workshops gather small groups of translators to meet for 75 minutes and explore a topic in-depth. They are typically more interactive or “hands on” than panels, and workshop leaders may invite participants to bring texts to workshop. Workshops are led by 1 or 2 leaders. Any number of attendees may join in, with no need to register their interest ahead of time. Workshops are spaces for discussion, collaboration, and creative thinking.

If you would like your workshop participants to share translated texts or other material with you before the conference begins, you must include your contact information in the workshop description you include when you propose the workshop. (Please note that anyone can join a workshop at the conference. Signing up for workshops in advance is not required.)

Workshop Proposals must include the following:
(Please have these elements ready at the time of submission.)

• Title: (70 characters or fewer);
• Organizer Information: name, email address, phone number, and 400-character bios for your organizer (NOTE the organizer must be a current ALTA member in order to propose a workshop, and organizers may only propose ONE panel or workshop);
• Leader Information: names, email addresses, phone numbers, and 400-character bios for the one or two workshop leaders (the organizer may be one of the leaders); *NOTE that if you are proposing an incomplete workshop (see above) you need not include a second leader name;
• Description: a description (800 characters or fewer) of the workshop’s subject and goals, which will be used in the call for participants and on the event page;
• Session Tags: you will have the opportunity to share whether your session fits into certain categories, and which languages are represented (this aids conference organizers in creating the schedule but has no bearing on acceptance);
• Scheduling requests: share any known conflicts for your moderator(s) between October 21-24, 9:00am to 5:00pm. We will make every effort to accommodate your requests, but we can make no guarantees;
• A/V requests: Audiovisual equipment will be limited for ALTA49 sessions. If you would like to request A/V equipment, please do so here. Be sure to specify your needs (projector and screen, etc). ALTA will not be able to meet all requests. Please only request A/V if it is integral to your session (that is, your session relies heavily on the visual). Please note that you may NOT bring your own A/V equipment, per our contract with the Marriott.
• Acknowledgment of registration: by proposing a workshop for ALTA49, you understand that you and your fellow workshop leader (if applicable) must all purchase ALTA49 registration.

Please help us achieve an aesthetically pleasing consistency among the program bios (and save us considerable time editing yours!) by adhering to the following Style Guide. A few samples are provided below. You are encouraged to view past programs for complete listings of participant bios in ALTA’s conference archive.

Style Guide:

• Use no more than 50 words.
• Keep to the third person.
• Use the Oxford comma in lists: “A, B, and C,” not “A, B and C.”
• Capitalize any professional titles, and avoid “a/an” before them (e.g. Associate Professor of English, Assistant Translation Editor at Anomaly).
• Capitalize any Department or Program names (e.g. Department of Creative Literature).
• Abbreviate degrees without periods (e.g. “MA/PhD,” not “masters/doctorate”).
• Italicize journal and book titles.
• You may include your email and/or personal website information.
• Use just one space between sentences, not two.
• Spell “nonfiction” without a hyphen.
• Spell out numbers up to one hundred, unless labeling a century (e.g. “He has published fourteen books,” “in the 20th century”). Hyphenate adjectival compounds before a noun (“a 19th-century writer”).
• Possessives for names ending in -s should use apostrophe followed by s. For example, “Anis’s translation.”

Note: Google Forms do not allow italics, so you may choose to designate titles by placing an underscore before and after as a signal to organizers, like this: _What’s Left of the Night_. 

Examples: 

Rachael Daum translates from Serbian, Russian, and German. She received her MA from Indiana University in 2016, with a graduate certificate in Literary Translation for a translation of an absurdist children’s puppet play by Danil Kharms. She currently lives and works in Germany, and is ALTA’s Communication & Awards Manager.

Amalia Gladhart is the translator of _Trafalgar_ (Angélica Gorodischer) and _The Potbellied Virgin and Beyond the Islands_ (both by Alicia Yáñez Cossío). Her short fiction appears most recently in _Parcel_, _Nowhere Magazine_, and _Atticus Review_. She is Professor of Spanish at the University of Oregon.

Nathan Douglas is a PhD student in Spanish Literature at Indiana University Bloomington. He is particularly interested in looking at constructions of identity in contemporary Spanish and Catalan literature and their possible relations to the push for Catalan sovereignty.