There have been quite a few conversations recently around translation adjacent activities, inspired by Kotryna Garanasvili’s article in Words Without Borders, as well as a discussion at the Assembly of Literary Translators in March on ‘tapas careers’ – a term used by one of the panellists, Alex Howard, that feels rather more appetising than portfolio careers. Paul and Annie discuss.
PRG: Both of us engage in a lot of translation adjacent activities and I remember us discussing the idea of a ‘tapas career’ immediately after we heard it back in March.
AR: I’ve always had something of a tapas career. It’s actually one of the reasons I was able to start translating, as I was already doing a number of largely freelance roles, so I neither had to squeeze translation around a full-time job, nor make a sudden leap to go freelance and hope that I’d be able to earn enough to live on. My other roles mostly involve arts management in the literary sector – when I started translating, I was working for a poetry festival, as well as in a bookshop. What about you?
PRG: I quit my job in catering to become a full-time literary translator and focussed solely on that in the first few years. Luckily I was asked to do a little language teaching in those years, because making a living as a full-time literary translator is really difficult, in fact almost unheard of among literary translators. At various stages, I’ve done varying amounts of work outside of translation, sometimes turning down teaching work and sometimes turning down translation work, 🙁which always makes me sad!
AR: I’m so impressed that when you started out you were largely working as a literary translator – the 2024-25 tax year was actually the first year where the bulk of my income came from translation, I think! (And to be honest, I’m not expecting 2025-26 to follow suit.) I was actually quite surprised, as I had a mix of roles; as well as translating (and translation adjacent activities), I did project management for the National Centre for Writing and did some very non-literary admin for a charity (a job that, I confess, I took on in a bit of a panic when I thought – wrongly, as it turned out – that I didn’t have enough work lined up).
Annie’s 2024-25 income breakdown
PRG: My 2023-2024 was REALLY poor for translation, mostly because I was dealing with illness and just couldn’t concentrate on big projects, but teaching an hour here or there was manageable. I used to teach Danish at several universities, but that dried up so I launched my own language courses last year and it’s been more successful than I imagined, but it also means I have less time for translation. But last year (2024-25) was a 50-50 split between my language teaching and my translation work. And as much as I’d rather be doing 100% translation, I do enjoy my language teaching and it keeps my language skills sharp and sometimes gets me looking at translation questions from a different direction.
Paul’s 2024-25 income breakdown
AR: Oh, my other roles absolutely flow into my translation – as well as building connections with publishers and literary festivals, they help me to have a strong sense of the contemporary book market and where my translated authors fit into that.
PRG: Interesting that for both of us, translation made up roughly 50% of our total income.
When we first started discussing this, I was really inspired to find out more about the breakdown of my translation work, ie. the various translation adjacent jobs I do. I was really surprised by some of the figures, but I think they will be really useful for me in planning my work in coming years.
Annie’s breakdown of translation income
AR: Yeah, I think I was surprised by quite how many things I do that aren’t exactly translation but which relate to it – interestingly, in the breakdown from translation related activities, translation only makes up about a quarter of my income (most of which comes from the advance for a single book). A lot of my work involves reviewing and writing articles about translated literature, and something I’ve really enjoyed this year has been getting into translation mentoring and leading or facilitating translation workshops.
You’ve differentiated between samples and full samples there; what does that mean?
Paul’s breakdown of translation income
PRG: It’s fairly common in the Scandinavian market for translators to be asked to translate whole books on spec by a publisher, author or agent, with no guarantee of publication. For many of us, sample translations are our bread-and-butter, while full-length samples are almost like bonuses, because they tend to pay quite well. (I once was asked to translate a 100-page sample in 2 weeks, as the book was up for a prize, and I gave them a ridiculous quote in order to fend them off, but then they accepted! So I didn’t sleep for 2 weeks but went on a nice holiday that summer!)
AR: I never cease to be jealous of the funding situation for Scandinavian translators…Although that timeline definitely doesn’t sound fun.
PRG: Regarding funding, one of your translation categories is funding panels, what is that exactly?
AR: I sit on the Publishing Scotland translation funding panel – I help to sift through applications from international publishers wanting funding to support their publication of Scottish authors. I’ve also occasionally been a jury member for New Books in German, who aren’t exactly a funding body, but books showcased by NBG are guaranteed funding if translated and published in the next 5 years. Both of these have been really interesting experiences – I learn a lot about the literary market, and it helps me to know how to build a good case for support for my own authors.
PRG: We’ve gone even further down the rabbithole, breaking down our translation work by genre, which again, was very surprising! As I said,I do a lot of sample translations for Scandinavian publishers, agents and authors, but I hadn’t realised they were mostly children’s books, which make up half of my translation income!
Annie’s breakdown of genres
AR: I think it’s really interesting that neither of us are making much of our income from the genre we’re most associated with (which is perhaps also the genre we most identify with). I was quite startled at how little I made from poetry translation last year – this is partly because it was a really full on year, so I’ve not had much time to actively pitch. And it’s also just the nature of poetry translation, which isn’t exactly known for high remuneration.
Paul’s breakdown of genres
PRG: Yes, and obviously for me that’s theatre. I guess it goes to show how difficult it can be to specialise in a translation field of your choosing. The theatre world is not exactly brimming with funding either, especially not for translations. These figures obviously don’t include translations projects that I’ve initiated and have not (yet) received any payment for. Which makes me think about other things we do on a voluntary level, including applications for residencies, grants and other projects, which can consume a lot of time!
AR: Absolutely. We’ve shown breakdowns by income here, because that’s something we have to track anyway (hello, HMRC), but I can imagine that all of these charts would look very different if they showed the division of our time, rather than our earnings!
Our breakdowns here were inspired by Katie Hale’s annual breakdown of her income as a writer – do check out her fantastic work on making a living in the literary sector!
