CV
2024
Travel grant from the German Translators’ Fund for a trip to Montenegro
2024
English PEN Award for translating Anomaly by Andrej Nikolaidis
2022
English PEN Award for translating the Macedonian and BCMS texts in Take Six: Six Balkan Women Writers
November 2022
Residency in Skopje, North Macedonia
October/November 2021
Travel grant from i-Portunus for a trip to Belgrade
October 2020
Residency in Zagreb, Croatia
October 2018
Residency in Cetinje, Montenegro
May 2017
Residency in Pazin, Croatia
2016
Longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award with Andrej Nikolaidis’s Till Kingdom Come
October 2016
Official guest of the Belgrade International Book Fair
2015
Shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award with Aleksandar Gatalica’s The Great War
August 2015
Residency in Tršić, Serbia
2013
Travel grant from the German Translators’ Fund for a trip to Macedonia
2008/2009
Scholarship from the German Translators’ Fund for translating Luan Starova’s novel Ervehe: Kniga za edna majka from Macedonian into German
2001
Accreditation as a translator from Croatian, Macedonian and Russian into English with NAATI (the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, Australia)
1998 and 2001
Grants from the Institute for Anarchist Studies (USA) for translating various Russian and Bulgarian texts
1997
One-month bursary at the British Centre for Literary Translation, Norwich, translating a Yugoslav children’s book (Kumewawa Son of the Amazon by Tibor Sekelj)
1995
Successful completion of the German State Translator’s Examination for English; soon afterwards I became a “sworn translator” for English
since 1991
freelance translator in Berlin
1990 – 91
English tutor at the Technical University of Magdeburg, (East) Germany
1990
Birth of my son
1989 – 90
Postgraduate year in Russian philology at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow
1988 – 89
Postgraduate year in South-Slavic Studies at the University of Zagreb
1987 – 88
Assistant English teacher at two high schools in Passau, West Germany
1983 – 86
BA in German, Russian and Serbo-Croat at the Australian National University, Canberra
1977 – 82
Secondary school in Canberra (including 5-month stay as exchange student in West Germany)
1969 – 76
Primary school in Glasgow, Scotland, and Canberra
1965
born in Newcastle, Australia
Memberships
The German literary translators’ organisation Verband deutschsprachiger Übersetzer (VdÜ)
www.literaturuebersetzer.de
The Translators Association (UK)
www.societyofauthors.org/translators-association
What others say about me
Translated by Will Firth with glee and precision.
Rory McNeill reviewing Andrej Nikolaidis’s Anomaly in The Telegraph, 2024
Firth’s own profound knowledge of the Balkan region (…) [has] contributed to the brilliance of his rendering of Anomaly.
Sofija Popovskareviewing Andrej Nikolaidis’s Anomaly in Asymptote, 2024
…translated with customary fluency and panache by Will Firth…
Jonathan Bousfield reviewing Bekim Sejranović’s From Nowhere to Nowhere on Stray Satellite, 2020
It’s a tribute to the agility and perseverance of translator Will Firth that Krleža’s incendiary prose strikes home with such fluent power.
Jonathan Bousfield reviewing Miroslav Krleža’s Journey to Russia on Stray Satellite, 2018
A special place must also be accorded to Will Firth, who has translated the Bosnian original into an English laden with unique atmosphere, at once exotically local yet recognizably universal throughout.
Andrew Singer reviewing Faruk Šehić’s Quiet Flows the Una in World Literature Today, 2016
Our Man in Iraq may well prove to be one of those rare cases where something is actually gained in translation.
Emily Donaldson reviewing Robert Perišić’s novel in The Star, 2013