Pro Helvetia’s support
for translation

Pro Helvetia’s Translate Swiss Books platform serves to promote Swiss literature in the national and international arena. The website presents newly published books in all languages of which we would be happy to support the translation into other languages. This selection does not claim to be exhaustive: of course other Swiss books can profit from Pro Helvetia’s support for translation. Funding does not depend on a presentation on this website.

Pro Helvetia supports the translation of:

• contemporary literary works by Swiss authors (fiction and poetry)
• children’s and YA literature. In the case of translations of illustrated children’s or YA literature, half of the licence costs (max. CHF 2,000) are covered in addition to the translation fees.
• comics. In the case of comic translations, a share of the lettering costs is covered in addition to the translation fees.
• plays by Swiss dramatists (including theatre surtitles)
• samples of contemporary literary works by Swiss authors

To help promote Swiss literature in translation, Pro Helvetia also contributes financially to the international presence of Swiss authors of recently translated books.

How to proceed

Applications must be submitted by the licensed publisher. An application must contain the licence and translation contracts, a CV of the translator as well as 20 pages of the proof-read translation manuscript and the corresponding original text.

For detailed information on the application procedure, please see the guidelines on our website here.

Deadline
We accept applications at any time, but they must be submitted at least eight weeks before the date of printing.

We accept applications exclusively via our website www.prohelvetia.ch.

For translations of Swiss texts into the languages from South-east Europe, Pro Helvetia is a partner of the European Network for Literature and Books Traduki. All requests involving a translation into Albanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Romanian, Serbian and Slovenian should be addressed directly to Traduki at www.traduki.eu.