After graduating with a Masters degree in Comparative Literature from UCL in 2011, Sophie immersed herself in Mexican culture, living in Mexico City and working as Editor-at-large for the international journal Asymptote, and guest editing a feature for Words Without Borders. She has also translated journalistic pieces on contemporary Mexico for English PEN, the Guardian, and a section of The Sorrows of Mexico (MacLehose Press), a collection of essays on the assassination of journalists in the country.
Sophie’s first published book was the translation of Spanish author Iván Repila’s stark, allegorical novel The Boy Who Stole Attila’s Horse (Pushkin Press), with her rendition being described by the Irish Times as a ‘faultless, rhythmic translation that enables the bleak narrative to soar’.
She has translated a dozen books and a selection of her translations have been longlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award, the Best Translated Book Award and the PEN Translation Prize. In 2017, Sophie was awarded a PEN Heim Literary Translation Grant to translate Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán’s debut novel The Remainder, which also won a PEN Translates award. Her co-translation, with Amanda Hopkinson, of José Revueltas’s novel The Hole was published by New Directions in 2018 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 global student protest movement.
Sophie is particularly interested in co-translation, and has worked on novels in this way with Amanda Hopkinson, Margaret Jull Costa, and Juana Adcock. She has also written on the practice and profession of literary translation for the Times Literary Supplement, LitHub, and In Other Words, among other publications.