The Festival
Translated By, Bristol is a biennial festival celebrating translators and translated literature. The first iteration took place in Bristol from May 12th – May 25th 2025. Translated by, Bristol was founded by author/translator Polly Barton in collaboration with two independent Bristol bookshops (Gloucester Road Books and Storysmith).
The festival will celebrate the art and practice of literary translation, foregrounding the translators themselves.
Our first iteration included a festival-exclusive collaboration with the International Booker Prize, which saw the translators shortlisted for the 2025 prize in conversation with the prize’s administrator, Fiammetta Rocco.
At Translating the Porterverse, beloved multi-award-winning and bestselling author Max Porter was in conversation with one of his closest translators Saskia van der Lingen about his body of work.
The rest of the programme included in-conversation events with translators and authors including Jen Calleja, Annie McDermott, Gregor Hens, Hassan Blasim, Jonathan Wright, SJ Kim, Polly Barton and many more. Ruth Ahdmezai Kemp delivered a free kids’ translation workshop, and there was a panel focusing on Latin American translation featuring Annie McDermott and Frank Wynne.
The festival closed on Sunday 25th May with a special Translation Duel between Frank Wynne and Adriana Hunter.
In 2026 Translated By, Bristol hosted the International Booker Prize Shorlist Readings, held in Bristol for the first time at The Bristol Beacon’s Lantern Hall. Shortlisted authors and translators were joined in conversation by the prize’s Emeritus Director, Fiametta Rocco.
With a mission to acknowledge the role and contribution of translators across the world, Translated By, Bristol is the first of its kind in our city.
The festival will return with a full programme of events in Spring 2027. We are now taking accepting event pitches for our 2027 programme.
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The Organisers
Polly Barton is a writer and literary translator from the Japanese. Her translations include Butter by Asako Yuzuki, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura. She has published two works of non-fiction, Fifty Sounds, for which she won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and Porn: An Oral History. What Am I, A Deer? is her debut novel.
Gloucester Road Books opened its doors in April 2021, one of a small number of bookshops in the UK quixotic enough to spring up in the midst of a pandemic. The shop supplies the good people of the Gloucester Road and beyond with books to entertain and challenge, with a focus on small presses, literature in translation and thoughtfully curated selections of non-fiction and children’s books. The shop offers a monthly fiction subscription, runs a book club, hosts writing workshops and a busy schedule of literary events. Since opening, they’ve hosted the likes of Zadie Smith, Mick Herron, Jonathan Coe, Alejandro Zambra & Megan McDowell, Elisa Shua Dusapin and many more.
Storysmith is an award-winning independent bookshop based in South Bristol, established in 2018 and stocking a tightly curated range of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. The shop was picked by Guardian readers as one of the 12 best independent bookshops in the UK, and in 2023 was named Independent Bookshop of the Year (South West) at the British Book Awards. Since opening, they’ve hosted major literary events in Bristol with Percival Everett, Neneh Cherry, Mariana Enriquez, Colson Whitehead, Vigdis Hjorth & Charlotte Barslund among others.