JULIA SANCHES

A literary translator of Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan & French into English.

Julia Sanches is a literary translator working from Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan into English. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she has spent extended periods of time in the United States, Mexico, Switzerland, Scotland, and Catalonia, giving her an intimate knowledge of the languages, cultures, and literatures she works in. She is a founding member of Cedilla & Co., a collective of translators committed to making international voices heard in English, and chair of the Translators Group of the Authors Guild.

Julia holds a BA in English Literature and Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh and an MA in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona. After working as an assistant and agent for several years, representing authors from around the world, she is focusing her energies on translation and advocating for the authors and books she is passionate about.

Honors, Grants, Jury

Runner-up in Modern Poetry in Translation’s poetry in translation competition [ 2010 ] / Winner of SAND Journal’s translation competition (Poetry) [ 2012 ] / Winner of NYSCA grant from New York State for A Delicate Crime by Sérgio Sant’Anna [ 2017 ] / Winner of PEN Heim grant from PEN America for the translation of Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández [ 2018 ] / Judge of Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature [ 2018 ] / Judge of PEN Center USA Translation Prize [ 2018 ] / Winner of the PEN Translation Prize for Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver [2021] / Longlisted for the National Translation Award for Amora by Natalia Borges Polesso [2021] / Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award for Twenty After Midnight by Daniel Galera [2021] / Longlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for Permafrost by Eva Baltasar [2022] / Shortlisted for the Queen Sofia Prize for Slash and Burn by Claudia Hernández [2022] / Longlisted for the International Booker for Boulder by Eva Baltasar [2023] /

Services

Translation – Concise, readable and idiomatic translations of Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan documents into English, specializing in the narrative arts and humanities – literature, the arts, film, architecture, photography, etc. – with additional strengths in press releases and journalism. Translation samples of books can be provided for international submission or for in-house consideration.

Translation Evaluation & editing – Side-by-side evaluation of translation and original, as well as editing of translations. Rates are per hour and premised on the quality of the existing translation.

Consultation Services – With several years of publishing experience in the US as both a translator and literary agent, Julia is well-versed in strategizing submission plans for international authors in this territory and can provide the necessary on-the-ground industry intelligence.

Throughout the years, she has done reader’s reports on books originally written in Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and English for several publishers, including Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New Vessel Press, Penguin Press, Harvill-Secker, and Random House Mondadori, among others. Rate estimates provided on request, and are dependent on length, difficulty, and turnaround.

In the Works

Eartheater
(Cometierra)

Permafrost
(Permagel)

Late Summer
(O Verão Tardio)

Events

Stay tuned here for upcoming readings.