The Visible Art of Translation

Kyo Gerrits from the INCREC project interviews Bas Belleman. Bas Belleman is a poet, translator, journalist and writer. He got his degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Maastricht and his most well-known translations are the Sonnets of the one and only William Shakespeare himself into Dutch, for which he won the Filter translation prize in 2021. He began by translating the so-called Dark Lady sequence, before doing all 154 and the longer narrative poem “A Lover’s Complaint”. He has been translating Shakespeare for over 10 years now while also publishing multiple poetry collections and literary reviews.

In this episode, Ana Gueberof-Arenas, the PI of the INCREC-Project, sat down with Manik Sarkar, a literary translator from English and French into Dutch. He is the regular translator of Philippe Claudel and Joël Dicker; he has also translated works by James Baldwin, Kamel Daoud, Irène Némirovsky, Hisham Matar, Alexandre Jardin and Frédéric Beigbeder. He has translated well over sixty titles since 2002, and also graphic novels.Manik is also a lecturer at the Vertalersvakschool in Amsterdam since 2015 and is also a writer. His debut novel Ossenkop (Bullhead) was published in 2024 and is being translated into other languages like German (already out), French, English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Greek, Norwegian and Swedish. The book was nominated for several awards, and won the Hebban Debuutprijs, the Hans Vervoort prize and the Beste Groninger Boek 2025.

In this episode, Nastja is interviewing Miquel Cabal Guarro holds a degree in Slavic Philology and a PhD inSociolinguistics. His academic and professional work has focused on literary translation fromRussian into Catalan, translation theory, the reception of Russian literary translations, and the study of registers in the Catalan language. On the other hand, his research has specialised in language policy and sociolinguistics of the post-Soviet space in dialogue with the Catalan case, with a particular emphasis on the sociolinguistic situation of the Crimean Tatars and Ukraine.He has devoted 25 years to literary translation and has published more than fifty translations from Russian into Catalan, including works of prose fiction and drama. He is currently a lecturer in Translation and Russian Literature at the University of Barcelona, a member of the board of directors of the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations, and a delegate to the Language Policy Committee of the University of Barcelona.

Kyo Gerrits from the INCREC project interviews Xanna Reddingius. Xanna is an editor and translator of children’s books. She has studied Art History at the University of Amsterdam and has been working in the publishing industry for multiple years mainly in children’s literature. She focuses largely on English to Dutch, and her translations include multiple books in the famous little golden books series, “The Chase”, and several Disney projects.

Yining Chen from the INCREC project interviewed Vlad Glǎveanu, a Full Professor of Psychology in the Business School at Dublin City University and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology and the new AI Learn Institute at the University of Bergen. He graduated with a BA in Psychology from the University of Bucharest and an MSc and PhD in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics. His research focuses on creativity, innovation, imagination, wonder, technology, culture, collaboration and possibility related topics. He is founder and director of the DCU Centre for Possibility Studies, founder and president of the Possibility Studies Network, editor of Possibility Studies and Society (Sage), and editor of the Palgrave Encyclopaedia of the Possible.