ALTA45 Panel: Making a Living as a Freelance Translator

In this session, four full-time freelancers will discuss what it takes to make a living in a profession with no official minimum rate, how they find paying gigs and diversify their revenue streams, reconcile passion projects with paid ones, and manage to sustain a practice of translation, especially if translation isn’t their only commitment. They will also share resources for self-employed translators, including advice for beginners.

…

Moderator

Bruna Dantas Lobato is a writer and translator living in St. Louis. Her recent translations from Portuguese include Caio Fernando Abreu’s seminal story collections Moldy Strawberries and No Dragons in Paradise (Archipelago Books), Stênio Gardel’s novel The Words that Remain (New Vessel Press), and Giovana Madalosso’s novel Tokyo Suite (Europa Editions).

Panelists

Larissa Kyzer is a writer and Icelandic literary translator. Her translation of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s A Fist or a Heart was awarded the American Scandinavian Foundation’s 2019 translation prize. She was Princeton University’s fall 2019 Translator in Residence.

Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator working from Arabic, German, and Russian into English. Her translations include books from Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland, and Syria.

A 2021 Guggenheim fellow, Edward Gauvin has translated in various fields from film to fiction, with a personal focus on contemporary comics (BD) and post-Surrealist literatures of the fantastic. The translator of over 400 graphic novels, he is a contributing editor for comics at Words Without Borders.