Rosalind’s early initiation into translation involved co-translating with Canadian translator Anne McLean. It was here that she learnt the craft of recreating the voice of the narrator or protagonist – something she refers to as a ‘sympathetic ventriloquism of a sort’. The result was Dublinesque (Harvill Secker/New Directions, 2012) a work by Enrique Vila-Matas which was longlisted for the 2014 International IMPAC Award.
Rosalind has a long standing and successful working relationship with Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos. Quesadillas (And Other Stories) (2013), a parody of Mexican culture, won the English PEN Award and his most recent I’ll Sell You a Dog (And Other Stories) (2016) is due for publication next year. Probably her best known translation is Villalobos’ Down the Rabbit Hole (And Other Stories)(2011) which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Oxford-Weidenfield Award. Rosalind went on to translate and adapt the book for the screenplay in collaboration with director Flávia Moraes.
Prominent in the world of translation and one of the first translators-in-residence at the Free Word Centre, Rosalind co-founded The Emerging Translators Network (ETN) in 2011, a support group for early-career literary translators, along with Anna Holmwood and Jamie Searle Romanelli. She organised event workshops including what she considers her most successful event, a translation game called ‘Wordkeys,’ developed in collaboration with Coney. She has been commissioned to run this at many events including the London Book Fair for English PEN and the Southbank Centre. If she were to win the fellowship Rosalind would aim to further develop ETN, buy time to research future book projects and run more translation-related events.