Translators of Finnish literature to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair – Over 60 translators from all over the world will take part

Frankfurt, September 9^th, 2014. As part of Finland’s project as Guest of Honour at the 2014 Frankfurt Book Fair, FILI is organising a separate programme of events for translators of Finnish literature. This is the first time in the history of the Book Fair that a dedicated programme has been put together specifically for translators.

A total of 60 translators have already registered to attend the programme, including 54 who translate from Finnish and 6 who translate from Finland-Swedish, into 16 different languages in all. Fully one third of the participants translate into German.

During the three-day-long translators’ programme, participants will acquaint themselves with the Book Fair from a professional perspective and will learn more about the role of translators in exporting literature. The world’s largest event for the publishing industry is a forum for the sale of translation rights – an activity that is important for translators to know about as well, because many of them act as ambassadors for Finnish literature in their own countries and market contemporary literature from Finland to local publishers.

The objective of the ‘Finnland. Cool.’ Guest of Honour project is to achieve a permanent boost in the sales of translation rights to books from Finland. This will not be possible without skilled translators, for whom FILI has provided many training opportunities. Over the years, FILI’s educational offerings have included translation seminars for beginning translators, for translators specialising in various literary genres, and even for translators working on the same author’s works or the same book.