Submissions
We welcome submissions from translators, writers, photographers, illustrators and readers from around the world for our print magazine, website and newsletters.
Before submitting, please browse our website and magazine to get an idea of the kinds of stories we translate and summarise.
Recommend to us
We are always on the lookout for great non-fiction articles published in languages other than English that we can summarise for our newsletters or translate in full for our print magazine. These are pieces that get behind the headlines and which relate closely to the place where they have been written.
We’re interested in all kinds of writing: long-form journalism, reportage, reviews, first-person narratives, interviews or analysis that gets behind the headlines.
For pieces we might translate in full for the magazine, we’re interested in local reportage, long-form journalism, first-person narratives or memoirs of 2,000-6,000 words, but also excerpts from non-fiction books not yet translated into English.
For pieces we might summarise for our newsletters, we’re interested in shorter articles that: are newsworthy but with a unique angle not found in English media; locally specific but globally relevant; or that are totally unique to your local media landscape. The stories we summarise must not already be available in English.
Please note that a recommendation does not guarantee we will commission you – if the story fits within our editorial we may work with a different translator and/or editor to translate or summarise the story for English readers. However if you are a translator or writer, please make that clear in your submission and we may find a way to work with you.
Please send article links, photos or voice notes to the Translator Mag Hotline via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram: +447519 137459
Pitch an original piece
We commission a limited number of original English articles for our website and print magazine. These include:
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Street Talk
These are 400-800-word original articles for the magazine about what the hyperlocal story is on everyone’s lips in your hometown/ village/ city/ region outside the Anglosphere that give us a sense of place, time and personality. We welcome pitches from non-professional writers, including in languages other than English. We will work with you on editing and translation. If you have an idea, get in touch and we can send further guidelines. We pay a flat fee of £100.
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Read Between the Lines
This is a format where we commission a journalist or commentator to interpret a recent article from beyond the Anglosphere: decoding the article’s meaning in the broader political, cultural and social context in which it was written, helping us understand how it would be read locally and giving us insight into what is making headlines (and why).
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Reviews
These are short reviews of a newly translated book into English, or of a film, TV series, podcast, festival, or even a performance in another language. We pay £100-200 for reviews of 400-1000 words.
Recent reviews have included Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood by Alexander Voloshin, translated by Boris Dralyuk, and What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton. You can read them in Translator Issue #3.
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Photo Essays
We commission a photo essay for each paper edition of Translator. We’re looking for photographs that explore a social phenomenon or tell a human story, taken by local photographers outside the Anglosphere, ideally with a close personal familiarity to the phenomenon or story their photographs describe. We’ll pair you with an editor/writer to ensure suitable text to accompany your photographs. We pay £300-500.
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Translate for us
We accept translation pitches for non-fiction writing from around the world. We’re looking for great reportage pieces of 2,000-6000 words, long-form journalism or other narrative non-fiction, published in a language other than English, in print, online or in other formats. Our process will always involve at least a couple of rounds of editing.
Our rates for professional translators are 14 pence per word for the first 3,000 words, or an agreed fixed fee for a longer text.
Draw for us
We occasionally will work with illustrators to illustrate a particular article, or more generally. If you’d like to be considered to contribute in this way, do let us know.
How to get in touch
If you’d like to recommend articles to us for summarisation or translation, or you’d like to work with us, we’d love to hear from you. Due to the large volume of submissions we receive, we unfortunately aren’t able to respond to everyone. Please do feel free to follow up if you haven’t heard back from us in a month.