Translators in Residence

Marie Hermet was our 2026 Translation Fellow. An award-winning translator, Marie has translated the work of several Irish writers from English into French, including Roddy Doyle, Donal Ryan and Dermot Bolger. She spent her time at Trinity translating Adrian Duncan's most recent novel.

The winner of our 2025 Fellowship was Olivier Deparis. Olivier studied English and American literature at Université Jean Moulin, Lyon III. Since the mid-1990s, he has translated over 60 novels and short-story collections from English into French, mainly by American authors. These include Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, Pete Dexter, James Lee Burke, Sam Lipsyte and George Saunders. Scottish crime writer Alan Parks has also kept him busy with his Harry McCoy series. Olivier spent two months at Trinity in March and April 2025, during which time he completed his translation of Oisín McKenna’s award-winning debut novel Evenings and Weekends. This novel was first published in 2024 by Fourth Estate and will made be available to French readers in 2026 by eminent French publishing house Les Éditions de l’Olivier.

Laetitia Devaux spent eight weeks at the Centre in 2024. During her residency, Laetitia worked on her translation of Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. She was working under top-secret conditions, as the French translation was due for publication by Gallimard on the same date as the book was published in English in September 2024. Laetitia had previously translated Rooney's Conversations with Friends and Beautiful World, Where Are You? into French. Laetitia studied French and English literature at Paris Cité University and at Trinity College Dublin.

She has translated many novels by writers including Eimear McBride, Ali Smith Zadie Smith and Vivian Gornick. She has translated work by Sebastian Barry, including Days Without End, A Thousand Moons and Old God's Time. In September 2023, she joined us for a celebration of Sebastian Barry's work in translation, in an event organised to mark European Day of Languages and International Translation Day. 

In October 2022, after a break imposed by the global pandemic, we were delighted to welcome translator Cécile Arnaud to Trinity College for eight weeks. During her time here, Cécile worked on her translation of Spies in Canaan by David Park, for publication by Les Editions de la Table Ronde. In 2022, she translated Park’s previous book, Travelling in a Strange Land, his first book published in France. Her translation, Voyage en territoire inconnu, was nominated for the Ireland Francophonie Ambassadors’ Literary Award in 2023.

Cécile graduated from Sciences Po-Paris and has a Master’s degree in English Studies from La Sorbonne. After her studies, she worked for 10 years in publishing before becoming a full-time literary translator. She has translated the work of several Irish writers, including Paula McGrath, Sinéad Gleeson and Molly Keane, as well as work by American novelists Alice McDermott, Katherine Mosby, Elizabeth Brundage and Robert Littell, and English writer Elizabeth Jane Howard. She was awarded the Baudelaire prize for literary translation in 2011 for her translation of The Long Song by Andrea Levy. She has also tutored on the Master’s degree in literary translation at Paris-Diderot University.

Mona de Pracontal was our inaugural French Visiting Translator Fellow. During her eight-week residency at Trinity College, Mona worked on her translation of Inch Levels by Neil Hegarty, which has since been published by Joëlle Losfeld at Gallimard. Mona de Pracontal graduated in English language and American Studies in Paris, and studied film history and film-making at Columbia University and The City College of New York. She started translating when she was a student and has not stopped since, with forays into the film industry and, more recently, conference interpreting.

Her major translations include works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hannah Tinti, Cynan Jones, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, Rick Riordan, Frank Baum, Melvin Burgess, Howard Norman, Kaye Gibbons, Hanif Kureishi, and Conor O'Callaghan. She has also translated non-fiction by William Burroughs and Gloria Steinem. In 2009, she was awarded the Baudelaire Prize for literary translation for her translation of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Prix de Traduction de la Fondation Irlandaise 2019 for her translation of Nothing on Earth by Conor O'Callaghan.

Mihaela Buruianã was Literature Ireland's 2025 Translator-in-Residence at Trinity College Dublin. Mihaela used the residency to work on her translation of The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry into Romanian. Kevin and Mihaela were interviewed about this work at Books Upstairs in November 2025, as part of of the Dublin Book Festival.

Anna-Nina Kroll (February-March 2020) used her residency to work on her translation of From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan. She has translated all of Ryan's other work into German. During the residency, we hosted a memorable evening with Donal and Anna-Nina, which included reading and even singing from the book! During Anna-Nina's time at Trinity, her translation of Milkman by Anna Burns was published.

Yiming Jin translated Maeve Brennan's short story collection The Springs of Affection into Chinese during her residency.

Débora Landsberg translated Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney into Brazilian Portuguese. Débora has also translated work by writers including Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Anne Enright and Joyce Carol Oates.

Matías Battistón: 

"Translating James Stephens’ The Insurrection in Dublin on location, only metres away from where the book was written and where the action took place, with the celebrations of the 1916 centenary in full swing all around me, has been a rare and privileged experience."

2014-2015: Turkey

• Fuat Sevimay
  

2013-2014: China

• Huiyi Bao

• Jian Lu (Jenny Lu) has a BA and MA in English Language & Literature from Shanghai International Studies University. In 2010 she was awarded the 7th CASIO Translation Competition Prize for translating The Use of Poetry by Ian McEwan. In 2012 she was appointed Literary Translator in Residence at Trinity College Dublin. She is currently working as a literary translator from English into Chinese. Her major publications include: The Absolutist by John Boyne; Frames Trilogy by John Banville; Christine Falls by Benjamin Black; The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne Enright; Knots and Cross by Ian Rankin.
  
  
• Jianing Zhou

Vladimir Babkov was our first visiting translator-in-residence, appointed in partnership with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature, Dublin City Council and Ireland Literature Exchange. Vladimir has a Masters in Literary Translation from English from the Gorky Literary Institute (Moscow). A physicist by training, Vladimir became involved in literary translation as an undergraduate student of the Moscow Physico-Technical Institute where he joined an amateur literary group in the early 80s. He subsequently attended master classes run by V. Golyshev, one of the outstanding translators of the late Soviet period. Vladimir’s first major publication was Huxley’s The Genius and the Goddess, which appeared in the literary journal Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature) in 1991.

Vladimir was awarded the Prize of the Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature) journal for the best translation of the year (1991), the Inolit Prize (1995), and the Unicorn and Lion award (2007); his work has also been shortlisted for the Little Booker Prize (2001). In July 1995 he was appointed Fellow of the Cambridge Literary Seminar.