The most lasting testament to W. G. Sebald’s profound interest in literary translation is the British Centre for Literary Translation, which he founded at the University of East Anglia in 1989 on the model of translator houses in Germany and France. His aims with BCLT were to provide material support for literary translators and to raise the profile of literary translation as a profession in the UK. Sebald established a small team around him and quickly secured stable, recurrent funding for BCLT from the Arts Council of Great Britain and other sources. He established the pattern of BCLT activity that largely still persists: the Centre became a base for dozens of visiting translators, hosted events (conferences, workshops and seminars, the St Jerome Lecture) and pursued other projects, in particular compiling a Directory of Literary Translators. Sebald served as Director for the first five years of BCLT’s existence: he stepped down in 1994 as his literary career began to blossom, but retained an attachment till his death. Now into its fourth decade, BCLT continues its vigorous promotion of literary translation at the interface between academia and the profession.

This chapter considers the social, political and historical circumstances that impact on literary translation into a minor language, with specific reference to the case of the Macedonian language spoken in the Republic of North Macedonia. An overview of the history of translation is first provided, beginning with the codification of the Macedonian language with the emergence of the Republic of Macedonia as a sovereign state within the Yugoslav federation. The chapter further discusses how the country gaining independence from Yugoslavia upon its breakup affected translation trends, and thus the quality of translated literary works. Finally, the chapter provides insight into how a recent authoritarian government abused political issues regarding identity to launch and realize a gargantuan government project involving the translation of hundreds of books within an extremely short period of time, thereby forever altering the literary landscape of the culture and setting harmful precedents regarding translation policies.

More than sixty years after its initial publication in Irish, Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s epic novel Cré na Cille appeared in an English translation: two of them, in fact – each published within a year of the other and by the same publisher, Yale University Press. This chapter takes this unusual circumstance as a stimulus to investigate the wider literary landscape and to give a nuanced overview of pertinent issues and emerging trends in Irish-language literature. Special attention is given to the role of translation, both to and from Irish, in the publication, mediation, and reception of Irish-language literature. Although much is often made of the literary afterlives of Irish-language texts in English, the author contends that these issues are best examined and understood in a multilingual context.