All but the Translators’ Association have either just been or are still in the stages of a restructure that is intended to reinforce these practices. At the Arts Council, for example, the London office retains a national lead in promoting literary translation, while Director of Literature at the National Office, Gary McKeone, has himself taken on the responsibility for international literature. At the BCLT, outgoing director Professor Peter Bush is retaining links through his presence on the Management Board of the Federation Internationale des Traducteurs (representing some 7,000 translators worldwide); incoming director Amanda Hopkinson is looking to expand the work that can be done, not only through increasing staff at its base in the University of East Anglia, but through working with other organisations, including the national Translators’ Association and the European-wide Association des Traducteurs Litteraire [CEATL]. The British Council has been incorporating more and more literary translation into its projects. For example the ‘Klandestini’ project has involved workshops exploring creative writing in native languages (Greek, Italian, Maltese and Turkish) and in English, while an Arab/English translation seminar is due to take place in Damascus in March 2005, with the focus on practical ways of increasing links between the UK and Arab world in the area of translation and publishing.

The past year has been a particularly busy, but also a successful one. In April 2003 a jury composed of Professor Susan Bassnett, Jack Mapanje and Ahdaf Soueif, as well as the literary editor of the Independent newspaper and the Arts Council’s international literature officer, awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize to Swedish author Per Olov Enqvist and his translator Tiina Nunnally. There followed articles in both the Observer and The Times newspapers discussing the relevance of literary translation, particularly in multicultural societies such as our own. (It remains the case that, while over 340 languages are spoken by London’s primary schoolchildren, a lack of teachers and government encouragement means that fewer than ever before study ‘foreign languages’ – and just one child from a state school took a GCSE in classical Greek last year.

The Scandinavian theme was further promoted by a symposium at Helsinki University, followed by the ‘authors’ and translators’ week’ at nearby Lahrti, organised by the Finnish International Literature Exchange. As always, at such events, a main strand was to do with networking: directly attributable to the reunion was a revival of the World Patrimony of Literature project promoted by UNESCO, and a new liaison with the Next Page Foundation in eastern Europe (of which more anon). The writers’ symposium took as its theme ‘The Holy’, a subject on which most speakers decided they had as little to contribute as on ancient Greek: it seemed curious that in this bucolic lakeside idyll, not even the fabled Nordic gods could be summoned in the cause of literary inspiration. Instead, Enqvist made an impassioned speech against the invasion of Iraq and Israel’s role in Palestine.

The public highpoints of the British Centre for Literary Translation year are always the Summer School and the Translation Days in the run-up to the annual Sebald Lecture (formerly named after St Jerome, financial support from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) originally awarded to the author Max Sebald called for at least a temporary name change). Last year the talk was given by Tariq Ali: a wonderful unscripted, anything-but-impromptu, account of his early influences in oral Urdu poetry through to the political rhetoric that has made him famed as a public orator. The more critical the questions posed at the end, the more provocative the answers they produced. It was a fire-branded occasion and the hall was full.

The Frankfurt Bookfair in October led the way for the London Bookfair the following March, by launching a Literary Translation Tent. This included packed poetry readings and recitals, and included the performance of an initiatory Maori haka. While in the UK, only some 3% of books published are in translation, in Germany some 40% of novels are translated, around half of which are from the English. Much fruitful discussion, then for literary translators on both sides – and more to follow at his year’s Frankfurt Buchmesse, where the lead language will be Arabic, a language even further lacking trained literary translators.

In November, the Federation Internationale des Traducteur held an interim conference in Paris. (Normally it meets only triannually: last in 2002 in Vancouver; next in 2005 in Tampere). This was to celebrate the Federation Internationale des Traducteur’s 50th birthday, in its birthplace, and with its ‘literary day’ devoted to the translators of Harry Potter. It proved a clear indication of how hard things can get for literary translators if, and when, a giant and monopolistic publishing house seeks the harshest possible exploitation of their work, particularly in the fields of advertising, branding and marketing. Not all widely translated authors are as generous in their interventions as the Nobel Prizewinner Jose Saramago, who said: ‘I can only write for the Portuguese reader. It is my translators who render my books universal’.

In January the Next Page Foundation held a ‘mini-Think Tank’ in Sofia. It was a way of utilising Bulgaria’s political position, still outside of the EU, along with its geographical one, facing east and south. Funded by the George Soros Foundation, it has the independence to use its position through such projects as ‘East to East’ (the mutual translation of texts between East European and Central Asian countries) and the compilation of European booklists for translation into Arabic. It also works intensively with diasporas, particularly of Turkish and Romani speakers.

In March, Killarney was the town that enterprisingly celebrated Ireland’s assumption of the presidency of the EU, by hosting a conference on literary translation. It was attended by employees of the relevant Ministries of Culture, many of whom were involved in such discussions for the first time. A pity then, that so little credit was awarded to either literary publishers or translators by outgoing EU Minister Kosmopoulos, and that the Netherlands have dropped plans for an autumn follow-up.

One new London-based player on the international scene is the Committee for Linguistic and Literary Diversity. Launched by the writers’ association PEN International, with an initial grant of £30,000 from the Bloomberg Foundation, it has started by making marketing awards to publishers of both translated fiction and non-fiction, promoting the work of authors from persecuted minorities, or who address the events surrounding recent repressions.

A mixed year, internationally, then. But one in the UK that has seen an increase in both the publishing and reviewing of translated literature; in which more embassies and cultural institutes, such as the transnational Instituto Cervantes and Institut Français (covering, respectively, the Hispanic and Francophone worlds), and the Göethe and Austrian Institutes (working often in collaboration) are mounting new programmes; and in which the newly restructured British translation institutions are playing a leading role.