On 6 June the Etxepare Basque Institute organised a round table with the title ‘Writing in Basque, publishing in Spanish’, which was held during the Madrid Book Fair and organized in collaboration with the Editors Guild of Euskadi.

Participants were translator Josu Zabaleta (winner of the 2013 National Translation Award), Karlos Cid (translator and professor at Complutense University), and the writers Karmele Jaio and  Rikardo Arregi (novelist and poet respectively) most of whose works have been translated into Spanish. Arantzazu Fernandez was responsible for moderating the roundtable.

The meeting addressed the question of how Spanish translations of literature originally written in Basque are received by Spanish publishers. The participants underlined the importance of translation to spread knowledge about literature itself and to map Basque literature among other literatures worldwide, while acknowledging the difficulties arising from market forces. Participants also spoke about their own experiences regarding autotranslation, poetry translation workshops with poets, and translation using an intermediate language. Finally, the audience was informed of the latest Basque works that have been translated into Spanish.