About us

Directors

• Ros Schwartz, Co-Director

  Over the past four decades Ros Schwartz has translated over 100 fiction and non-fiction titles from French. In 2010, she published a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and her recent translated works include Mireille Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance and Selfies by Sylvie Weil. She is one of the team re-translating Georges Simenon’s works for Penguin Classics; 2022 saw the publication of her translation of Max Lobe’s Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside? (HopeRoad) and 2023 her translation of Simone Weil’s The Need For Roots (Penguin Classics) was released. Ros gives talks and masterclasses around the world and is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow. In 2009 she was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2017 she was the recipient of the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence. Photo: Anita Staff
• Holly Langstaff, Co-Director

  Holly Langstaff is an academic in French Studies with broader interests in translation. She runs the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation at the University of Warwick and the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, an outreach initiative from The Queen's College Translation Exchange. She was previously involved in Warwick Translates in 2019 and Bristol Translates in 2022. She is Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford where she teaches modern and contemporary French literature and translation. Her first monograph Art and Technology in Maurice Blanchot was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023.

Academic Lead

• Sam Strong

  Sam Strong is a lecturer in Translation Technology at the University of Bristol, and also teaches video game localisation and Spanish translation. His research has centred around videogame localisation, French gamer idiolect, and transcreation and immersion in online texts. He has worked as a professional linguist for over a decade in audiovisual translation, marketing transcreation, and scientific/medical translation, and has forthcoming publications on videogame localisation and audiovisual translation best practices.

Coordinator

• Charlotte Daw

  Charlotte is a freelance illustrator and printmaker, and an experienced administrator based at the University of Bristol. She recently gained her Masters degree in Illustration from Falmouth University (2024).

Publicity

• Jean Franco

  Jean Franco is currently pursuing an MSc in Visual Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam following his BA in Arabic and Persian at the University of Oxford. Alongside his studies, he has worked in publishing and translation, contributing to Saqi Books, ArabLit and Farsang Journal. Jean has also been involved in mentoring and university access programmes.