Wasafiri is excited to announce the second translation workshop tutored by our 2024/2025 Translator-in-Residence Sawad Hussain.

Pitching Your Translation

Pitching is a skill that translators are simply expected to possess — without the formal training on how to do it. Having run pitching workshops for translators working in languages as diverse as Yiddish, Swahili, and Portuguese, I’ve learned that the inner workings of pitching can be murky at best.

Pitching can be both a blessing and a curse. The upside is that you get to curate your own body of work, and, of course, translate books that deeply resonate with you. The downsides? How do you approach editors? How do you craft your pitch (whether in writing, or delivered verbally)? How do you remain resilient in the face of rejection after rejection?

This writing workshop will address these questions, as well as how best to manage your time and energy whilst pitching — which, let’s face it, is usually unpaid. Some translators work in language pairs that don’t require pitching, but for the rest of us, this workshop is exactly what I wish I had access to when I was first trying to gain a foothold in the literary translation industry. Now, as an experienced translator, who has had to pitch over 95% of my twenty (and counting) published book-length translations, I will share samples from my pitching materials, as well as top tips for success.

This is a generative writing workshop, and participants will leave with a clearer understanding of what needs to be highlighted in your pitch, how to tailor it to a specific editor or publishing house, the best times of the year to send out a pitch, and how to tell when it’s time to shelve a particular project.

When: Thursday, 19 June, 7-9pm GMT
Where: Online, via Zoom
Tickets: Full price tickets from £20-30. A limited number of concession and subsidised tickets are available.

The workshop is open to translators and writers at all levels and particularly to those from under-represented backgrounds.

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Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work was shortlisted for The 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and longlisted for The Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the Armory Square Prize for Literary Translation. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her latest translations include The Djinn's Apple (by Djamila Morani) and The Book Censor's Library (by Bothayna al-Essa; co-translated with Ranya Abdelrahman). A former Co-Chair of the Translator's Association (in the UK), she is committed to mentoring literary translators and developing the translation industry in general.

Pitching Your Translation (June): An Online Workshop with Sawad Hussain