Comma Press Presents Manchester in Translation Conference

With preferential sign-ups given to Manchester area participants, all events in this series are free charge.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

Free Online Sessions from Manchester, England

Founded in 2002, the nonprofit Comma Press is an independent publisher that produces short-story anthologies and single-author collections in paperback and ebook formats.

It’s based in Manchester, and has announced its 2024 “Manchester in Translation” program for February 19 to 21. (Note that some of the graphics associated with the program say February 18 to 21. Scheduled events appear to start on February 19.)

Devised especially for aspiring translators of Arabic, German, and Bangla/Bengali—to “celebrate the city’s language diversity along with all things literary translation—and is made up of panels, talks, and workshops, all staged online.

Among the planned program elements:

A keynote with translator and author Anton Hur on February 19. Hur is the author of Toward Eternity (HarperVia) and No One Told Me Not To (Across Books). He was born in Stockholm and currently resides in Seoul.
A German-English workshop, also on the 19th with Katy Derbyshire and said to be limited to UK sign-ups only
A panel on decolonization on February 20 with Kavita Bhanot, Kathryn Batchelor and Respond Crisis Translation
Another event on the 2oth of February said to be limited to UK-based translators only, a Bangla/Bengali workshop with Amy Parsons
A panel on February 21 called, Working With a Writer, with Daniel Hahn, Adam Talib and Mui Poopoksakul
And yet another event said to be available only to UK-based translators, an Arabic translation workshop with Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp

In all cases of these events, which are booked free of charge through EventBrite, be sure to read the disclaimer about the need for language proficiency and to note that there are limitations on how many participants can be involved, with a certain number of spots reserved for residents of the greater Manchester area.

More information is here.

More from Publishing Perspectives on translation is here, more on translators is here, and more on the United Kingdom and its publishers is here. More from us on Arabic is here.

About the Author

Porter Anderson

Porter Anderson has been named International Trade Press Journalist of the Year in London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives. He formerly was Associate Editor for The FutureBook at London's The Bookseller. Anderson was for more than a decade a senior producer and anchor with CNN.com, CNN International, and CNN USA. As an arts critic (Fellow, National Critics Institute), he was with The Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Tampa Tribune, now the Tampa Bay Times. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman.