Literary exchange and translation in the Euro-Mediterranean region

Literature Across Frontiers has been working in the Mediterranean region since the mid 2000s, developing projects and relations with organisations and institutions, as well as individual publishers, authors and translators, in order to encourage literary exchange between European countries and the South East Mediterranean. In partnership with the Anna Lindh Foundation, an international organisation which promotes intercultural exchanges and common projects among the civil societies of the Euro-Mediterranean region with support form the European Union, and the French organisation Transeuropéenes, Literature Across Frontiers contributed to the development of a translation strategy for the Euro-Mediterranean region within the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Translation Programme, the first stage of which was concluded in 2013. This initiative consisted of a mapping of translation flows in the region, and included several pilot projects in the field of literary translation training in Turkey and Egypt, and cultural and literary diversity, encouraging recognition of minority language-literatures in the Euro-Mediterranean region. In view of consolidating this work, LAF co-organised a series of workshops and three conferences in Turkey and Malta. The conference Literary Exchange and Translation in the Euro-Mediterranean Region: Challenges of the Next Decade was held in Istanbul in 2011 in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and the conference on minority language literatures in the Euro-Mediterranean region was held in Istanbul in the same year. A conference discussing possible strategies for exchange and cooperation in the region was held in. Malta in 2013. Read more about the projects here .

The pilot projects focused on developing training opportunities for literary translators from less widely used European languages into Arabic and Turkish in cooperation with Ain Shams University in Cairo and Bogazici and Kadir Has University in Istanbul, and on the status of literatures written in minority languages without a sovereign state in cooperation with AnatliaLit Agency and Bilgi University in Istanbul.

The Anna Lindh Foundation held several meetings of experts to continue the programme and organised two conferences on translation in the region, one in Slovenia in 2016 and one in Tunis in 2017.

With the support of