The Two Wolves Inside Me: Writer vs. Translator by Anton Hur

Both a novelist and translator, Anton Hur – Fiction judge for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize – discusses the varied experiences between writing and translating fiction, and how each role is treated in a book's production process.

The 2025 Prize is open for submissions until 30 June 2025. Submit here.

When I published my first novel, Toward Eternity (Harper360) last year, I frequently received a question: does it feel different to write your own book instead of translating someone else’s? 

Everything different about being an author, as opposed to being a translator, has to do with what happens outside of writing and translating. Authoring a book, as a profession, is quite established and well-defined. An author writes a book, they edit it along with an editor, and then their marketing and PR team sets up their tour, telling them where to go. After the tour, the author sits down to write their next book, and the cycle begins anew. 

Being a translator is a lot more work than being an author, and a translator’s job begins way before they translate a single word. First, they have to find a book to translate. This means constantly reading a mountain of books and being on top of what is coming out, what is selling, and what hidden gems other translators have overlooked. Then, they have to verify the rightsholders, after which they must contact the rightsholders to obtain permission to translate the book — this often involves hours and hours of unpaid outreach and education, stretched over weeks or months. Then the translator has to find a publisher for the book, which could take years. Then the translator has to actually translate the book, edit it with the editor, and negotiate some kind of promotional plan between all the stakeholders: the author, the author’s agent, and the publisher. Finally, the translator must participate in promoting the book. And it is usually the translator who also has to find funding for all of the above. 

Everyone helps the author. No one helps the translator. 

I really feel pampered as an author; it’s quite the lap of luxury just having everyone do things for you. I enjoyed it so much that I had my agent take over much of the work around my translations, although I still do a lot of the discovery, pitching, and promotion on my own. There are many a hair-raising tale I could tell about being a translator in Anglophone publishing: the backstabbing, the sheer unprofessionalism, the daily humiliation. Sometimes, I look at my author friends and think, Oh how adorably naive. Not that authors don’t experience such things at all but take it from someone who is both: it is much, much harder being a translator. That’s probably why there are so many authors but so few literary translators. Many can translate, but few can withstand the literary translator life. 

Everyone helps the author. No one helps the translator. 

There are some differences where translators are at an advantage. The network I have built as a translator is the kind of network very few authors possess. When I was a finalist for the National Book Award, I kept running into editors I had worked with at the ceremony. The five tables closest to the stage were reserved for the Big 5 publishers — I had worked with editors at three of those tables, as well as at their imprints. An editor told me that I had probably worked with more editors in publishing than most writers, and with more publishing houses than most editors. Then there is the international network of literary translators translating into English and our sacred communal spaces such as the British Centre for Literary Translation, the American Literary Translators Association, London Book Fair, Bread Loaf Translators Conference — when you’re a translator, you have friends everywhere. We watch each other’s backs. We warn each other about bad situations, bad relationships, and bad vibes. I could not have survived and thrived in the industry without them. Sure, authors have communities as well. But it’s not the same, not as tight, and not as global. Sorry! That’s just the way it is. 

Writers are inherently solitary while translators are inherently communal. Even if the translator’s author is dead, the translator collaborates with the author’s text. Translators work with everyone in publishing, as there is usually no agent intermediary to manage the lines of communication, so an antisocial personality will get you nowhere fast. Meanwhile, in authorland, there is this myth of the author as this solitary genius who retreats into the self-imposed isolation of their vision to come up with their art in utter privacy. Being an author means the cheese stands alone. 

Speaking of other people, what I love the most about being an author goes back to my first point of everyone always helping them. I love being an author not because it gives me more control over what goes on the page – although this is a bonus, I must say – but because I can give up control to other people, whose job is to be responsible for the parts of book production I don’t really want to be involved in. As an author, I love all the work other people do for me. So luxurious! I could really get used to this. 

Maybe I could give up translating and write full-time instead. I could really get all soft and nice and gooey like my author friends. My translator colleagues would not even recognise me anymore. Passing by with their flamethrowers and powerloaders, they would pause by a green pasture, see me grazing, and go, ‘Is that ... Anton?’ And I would look up and wave a hoof at them. Would they be appalled? Would they be happy for me? I don’t know. Either way, I would bend back down to the grass and continue to graze. It makes me feel so blissful just thinking about it ... 

The 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize is open for submissions (including translated work) until 30 June. To have your work considered by Anton Hur and the rest of our judging panel, submit here. 

Image: Gustave Caillebotte, Portrait of a Man Writing in His Study, 1885 via WikiArt