MAPS OF CONFINEMENT
Agnes Fanning
She studied Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Oxford and will begin an MPhil this year, also at Oxford, focusing on Latin American literature, namely works by Clarice Lispector and Jorge Luis Borges. Having grown up between England and Argentina, she has always been fascinated by languages and the role translation plays in influencing how literature is read, especially in Spanish-language and Lusophone writing.
An Yu
He was born in Tai'an (Shandong) and lives in Beijing. He’s currently doing a Master's in Portuguese Language Literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University. He started to work as a translator (Portuguese-Chinese) since 2019, having collaborated and provided translation services to various cultural organizations and academic institutions, both national and international.
Ana Lúcia Araújo
French and Brazilian, she was born in Brazil. She graduated in Literature (Portuguese and French) from federal university of Minas Gerais. She studied literature, linguistics, classic languages (Greek and Latin), and modern languages (English, German, Spanish). She has a post-graduation in History of Art and Culture, and worked as a cultural mediator at the renaissance’s castles of Loire Valley in France. She taught Portuguese in Brazil and France. She moved to France in 2009, and did a Master’s from LLCE in Languages, Literature, Foreign Civilizations and Roman Studies at the Iberic Institute of the Sorbonne – Paris. Her research focused on “The global system of text and translation: the French literary field in Brazil from 2009 to 2017”. Between 2016 and 2019, she contributed to the Primavera Literária Brasileira da Sorbonne at various literary seminars in Paris and Lisbon, and took part in national and international literary festivals.
Ana Carvalho
She's a literary translator and lives in Amsterdam. She's the author of our profile picture. She has an MA in German and English Literature (Leipzig) and a Portuguese Lectureship from Humboldt-Universität in Berlim. She worked as a translator for the European Union. As a photographer, she contributed to a number of magazines and solo and collective exhibitions. Together with her husband, Harrie Lemmens, she created Zuca-Magazine, a publication featuring literature and photography, where she is responsible for the graphic design of both digital and paper editions. She contributed to two thematic issues published by a Dutch publishing house: one dedicated to poetry, the other to the poet Fernando Pessoa.
Andrew McDougall
He was born in Glasgow and studied Portuguese and English literature at the University of Edinburgh. He has also lived in Sussex, Lisbon, Coimbra, Logroño, Vitoria-Gasteiz and Norwich, where he completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia. His work has included co-translating a book by José Eduardo Agualusa. He translates from Portuguese and Spanish.
Catriona Parry
Born in Leeds, Catriona is now a PhD student at the University of Oxford. Her PhD research focusses on contemporary cinema from Angola and Portugal. She previously studied Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Cambridge, and a Masters in Comparative Literature at Birkbeck in London.
Claire Williams
Associate Professor in Brazilian Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford. As an academic she has published widely on twentieth and twenty-first century women’s writing, minority writing and life writing from the Portuguese-speaking world, and has translated stories by Dulce Maria Cardoso, Hélia Correia and Ana Paula Maia.
Clara Domingues
She graduated in Classical Literature from the University of Sorbonne, and since then she has become interested in the edition and translation of ancient texts written by the humanists of Renaissance. For some time she dedicated herself to an intense activity in Social and Solidary Economy (if all roads lead to Rome, Greek and Latin lead to everywhere), and after that she returned to university, the Paris 8, where she completed an MA in Literary Translation. Over a period of two years, she met other translators at École de Traduction Littéraire, who were as much generous as knowledgeable. Since then, she has been translating Lusophone authors to publishing houses as well as theatre and cinema.
Dominique Stoenesco
He was born in Bensançon. He taught Portuguese at a public secondary school in the region of Paris and at the Paris XII Faculty of Law – Val-de-Marne. He coordinated a number of educational and pedagogical projects. He’s a founder member of the magazine Latitudes – Cahiers Lusophones, and contributes to the weekly newspaper Lusojornal. He has translated a number of books (novels, short story collections, poetry) by Lusophone authors. He has poems published in the anthology Poetas Lusófonos na Diáspora (2020). He’s an administration member in the Association pour le Développement des Études Portugaises, Brésiliennes, d’Afrique et d’Asie Lusophones, and a correspondent member for the Academy of Literature in Salvador da Bahia.
Elton Uliana
Brazilian translator based in London. He is the co-editor of the Brazilian Translation Club at University College London (UCL). His published work includes short stories by Carla Bessa (Asymptote), Ana Maria Machado (Alchemy), Jacques Fux (Tablet), Sérgio Tavares (Bengaluru, Qorpus), essays by Manuel Querino, Mário Barata and Odorico Tavares (Art in Translation, Taylor & Francis); and forthcoming translations of stories by Conceição Evaristo, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Alê Motta and Carla Bessa (Machetes Under Our Beds: An International Anthology of Words and Writing by Daughters of Latin America, HarperCollins).
Gabriella Turner
Both Gabriella’s parents are keen linguists and inspired in her a love for languages, paving the way for her studying Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Oxford. She lived in Brazil on her year abroad where she worked as a translator and English teacher, before undertaking further translation work at a cultural hub in Spain. In the new year, she plans to split her time between Brazil and Mexico working as a TEFL teacher before launching an Arts and Music festival in the UK which aims to channel the ethos of carnival and incorporate as much Brazilian music and culture as possible.
George Newton
He studies Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Oxford. Translating for French family on their visits to the UK, George quickly became interested in translation and the nuances and power of language and its social role. Since then, George has learned several languages and engaged in the study of literature and linguistics at university.
Georgia Cooper
Georgia studies French and Portuguese at the University of Oxford. She has just returned from Brazil, where she spent time teaching English in an NGO based in Rio. She is currently working on a dissertation comparing two feminist texts from the Lusophone world, exploring her interest in female authorship.
Han Hu
She graduated in Portuguese Language from Beijing Foreign Studies University and is now doing a Master’s in Modern Languages at Oxford with a focus on Brazilian Literature and African Literature in Portuguese. A few selected short stories by Teolinda Gersão translated by Han will be published in China in 2022.
Harrie Lemmens
Born in Weert, Netherlands, he studied Literature and Philosophy at the University of Nijmegen. He has translated prose and poetry from German, English, Spanish and Portuguese, and names such as Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queiroz, Machado de Assis, Padre António Vieira, José Saramago, António Lobo Antunes, Clarice Lispector, Mia Couto, José Eduardo Agualusa, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, José Rentes de Carvalho, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Autran Dourado, Raduan Nassar, Michel Laub, Daniel Galera and Cormac McCarthy. In 2006 he won the translation prize from the Nederlands Letterenfonds Foundation. He wrote dozens of essays, literary reviews and afterwords. In 2014 he published Deus é brasileiro, translated into Portuguese and published by Editora Zouk from Porto Alegre. In 2021 'Licht op Lissabon – stadsverhalen', a book about Lisbon, is launched. Both books contain photographies by Ana Carvalho, with whom he founded the online magazine Zuca-Magazine (www.zuca-magazine.nl)
Isabella Dobson
Isabella Dobson is a student of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Oxford. This is her first piece of published translation, and she hopes to continue translating during her year abroad in 2022.
Isobel Jones
Isobel has recently graduated from the University of Cambridge with an MPhil in Comparative Literature having previously studied for an undergraduate degree in Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Edinburgh. She has lived in both Brazil and Spain where she undertook university courses at PUC-Rio and the Univerdad de Salamanca respectively. Her research has primarily centred on contemporary Latin American and Luso-African poetry and prose, with particular focus on the works of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, Conceição Evaristo, and Julián Fuks.
Jackie Hopkins
She was born in Llantrisant, Wales, and studied Beginners’ Portuguese and Spanish at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She studied a module in Advanced Translation as part of her degree and has been involved in translation projects for the Iguaçu National Park (Brazil), and ‘Colegio Santa Ana’ school (Spain). She has lived in Brazil (where she worked in the Iguaçu National Park), and also in Spain, Morocco, and Japan, where she worked as a qualified TEFL teacher. She has a great interest in language learning and is currently focusing on learning Arabic (Moroccan dialect) and Welsh. She hopes to complete a MA in translation studies in the near future.
Julia Willemyns
She is currently studying Modern and Medieval languages (French and Portuguese) at the University of Oxford. Born to Brazilian-Argentinian parents and raised in Hong Kong, she is particularly passionate about Latin America, frequently covering the region for publications like the Oxford Political Review and Sounds and Colours. In her spare time, Julia also writes poetry and prose.
Kaixin Ding, Catarina
She is currently studying Portuguese at Beijing Foreign Studies University, hoping to pursue a master’s degree in literature after graduation. At present, a research direction is still uncertain. She needs to embrace more possibilities. Nanjing is her homeland, which was named City of Literature by UNESCO in 2019. Therefore, literature has already become her destiny and way of life.
Lesley Saunders
Lesley Saunders’ most recent poetry collections are This Thing of Blood & Love (Two Rivers Press, 2022) and, with Rebecca Swainston, Days of Wonder (Hippocrates Press, 2021), a record of the first year of the Covid pandemic. Her translations – including the poem that won the 2016 Stephen Spender award – of renowned Portuguese poet Maria Teresa Horta were published as Point of Honour (Two Rivers Press, 2019). Lesley works with artists, sculptors, musicians and dancers as well as other poets. She is a visiting professor at UCL Institute of Education, and an honorary research fellow at Oxford University Department of Education.
Lingchen Huang
DPhil student in medieval and modern languages at University of Oxford, researching Brazilian literature (Clarice Lispector), modernism and affect theory. She completed an MSt in modern languages at University of Oxford in 2020 after studying Portuguese for her bachelor’s degree at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2019. She published articles on Portuguese Studies, Revista Escrita, Orientes do Português, etc.
Maya Szaniecki
Born in London to Brazilian parents. Grew up bilingual, speaking Portuguese at home and travelling to Brazil annually to visit family. She now studies French at the University of Oxford and has an avid interest in languages, literature, and journalism, which she hopes to pursue. She is currently preparing to spend a year abroad working in Belgium and France, to improve her spoken French.
Nathan Leach
Nathan started learning Portuguese to reconnect to his family roots in Brazil, his mother having been born in Petrópolis but moving to the UK when she was 9. He soon became fascinated with the language and decided to study it further in university. He has recently finished his MSt in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, focusing on Brazilian cinema in the late 60s and early 70s.
Olivia Walsh
Born in the UK, she’s a student of Portuguese and Spanish at University of Oxford. She started studying Portuguese in 2021 and loves it. This is her first translation, and she hopes to translate more work in the future.
Phoe McCallum
Born in the UK and raised in Cabo Verde, Phoe is a Spanish and Portuguese student at Oxford University. Phoe lived in Argentina before starting their studies and has a particular interest in translating dialectal texts from South America and Lusophone Africa. They are currently preparing for their year abroad where they will take a Human Rights course in Buenos Aires.
Sabela Guy
She studied French and Portuguese and is currently doing a Master’s in History of Art. Her particular interests lie in poetry, photographic literature and the French Impressionist period.
Samantha Morito
She was born and raised in London, and has done an assortment of teaching jobs in both English and Portuguese. She has recently completed her degree in Linguistics and Portuguese Language and Literature at Oxford University, and is looking forward to taking part, for the first time, in such a varied and current translation project.
Sara Novais Nogueira
She was born in Portugal, graduated in Pre-school education and worked as a nursery nurse and a teacher in Portugal. In 2012 she moved to Paris where she worked as a teacher and tutor of Portuguese Language at the University Paris 4 – Sorbonne, where she’s currently completing an MA in Foreign Languages, Literatures and Civilizations – specialization in Portuguese, with a dissertation about the presence of Brazilian and African literature in the Portuguese school manuals and how the publishing market affects that. She was part of the organisation of the Printemps Littéraire Brésilien and the Esther translation group. She has contributed to a number of international conferences about education and Lusophone literature.
Sue Williams
She’s a retired pathologist. After her retirement, in 2012, she studied Italian and completed a degree (2019) and a Master’s (2021) in Translation Studies at the University of Cardiff. She currently attends a Portuguese Language Course at the Languages Centre in Oxford.
Victor Meadowcroft
He’s a translator from Portuguese and Spanish, and a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s MA in Literary Translation programme. His published and forthcoming translations include stories by Agustina Bessa-Luís, in Take Six: Six Portuguese Women Writers (co-translated with Margaret Jull Costa, Dedalus Books), and Our Dead Skin, the debut novel of Natalia García Freire (Oneworld). He also co-ordinated the Bode Inspiratório – Escape Goat project, in which 47 translators rendered into English a serial novel written by 46 Portuguese-language authors during lockdown.
Vita Dervan
Vita Dervan is an experimental poet and translator from London. She is a co-founder of RGB Colour Scheme lit mag and the Oxford Anthology of Translation.
Yibing Chen
Graduated in Portuguese Language and Cultural Studies from Beijing Foreign Studies University, she is currently studying Chinese-Portuguese Translation for her master’s degree. Translation studies of Jorge de Sena’s poetry and comparative studies on music and literature are her main fields of interest. Her translation of Clarice Lispector’s work ‘Quase de Verdade’ will be published soon in China.
Zacharie Adjemien Kobenan
Zacharie has a Bachelor's degree in Foreign and Local Languages, Literatures and Civilizations in Spanish and Portuguese from the Jean Monnet University, and is now starting a Master's degree in Writing and Translation from the same university. During his third year of his Bachelor's degree, Zacharie took part in an Erasmus mobility program from the University of Oporto, where he confirmed his taste for the world of translation. His numerous trips to Africa and Europe helped him achieving a solid international background.
Zhu Fangzhou
Student of Portuguese Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, fan of translation, literature and music, founder of the choir Voz Ibérica. Always delighted with literary works, especially in Portuguese. Writing has become her main purpose in life and has a personal website to share it. Amateur pianist and contralto.