About the Center for Literary Translation:

Literary translators transmute one language, one system of values and one view of the world into another. In our era of globalization, their art is more necessary than ever before. The Center for Literary Translation seeks to promote the art and craft of literary translation and to acknowledge and pay tribute to the role of translators as key cultural intermediaries.

Based in the Writing Division of the Columbia University School of the Arts, the Center is the joint creation of PEN American Center, the online magazine Words Without Borders, the poetry journal Circumference and the Writing Division itself. It seeks to promote the study of translation, increase the number and quality of the literary translations published in English, and coordinate programs and initiatives that enhance awareness of the art of translation, the work of translators, and literatures not written in English. For further information about the CLT’s four affiliates –– Circumference Magazine, PEN American Center, Words Without Borders and the Writing Division at Columbia University –– please click on their individual links to the left.

The activities of the Center are made possible by the generous and much-appreciated support of the estate of Thornton Wilder, a great American novelist and playwright and a true internationalist. Other support for the Center comes from the PEN Translation Fund and the Writing Division of Columbia University.

The Center is run by an Executive Committee and an Advisory Board. Its Academic Director is Professor Michael Scammell of Columbia University; its Executive Director is Professor Esther Allen of Baruch College, CUNY.