About

I hold a BA Honours degree in English Language and Literature (European) with a Distinction in Spoken Spanish from the University of Leeds, and an MA degree in Comparative Literature from University College London. As a literary translator from Spanish, I have translated several contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain.

Research interests

▪ Mexican and Latin American History, Culture and Political Thought

▪ Protest and Prison Literature

▪ Translation Studies

▪ Literary Translation and Practice-Based Scholarship

PhD Project

José Revueltas (1914–1972) wrote the seminal modern Mexican novella, El Apando, during his incarceration in Lecumberri prison after his active role in the student demonstration in the Plaza de Tlatelolco in Mexico City on October 2 1968, also known as the “Tlatelolco Massacre”, when hundreds of students and civilians were killed by the Mexican military and police. El Apando—a characteristic portrait of deformed individuals in an even more deformed state institution—appeared at a time when individuals the world over were actively criticizing state and/or global structures. Beyond contextualizing Revueltas’ fluctuating position in Mexico’s political landscape, and how this is reflected in his fiction and essays, I am interested, as a translation scholar, in the reception of Revueltas—whose political and literary militancy covers forty years of Mexican leftist history, —outside of Mexico, in translation. Some of my work focuses on activism and translation, the ethics of translating prison texts, both fictional and non-fictional, and on the relationship between the aesthetic needs of the text and the translator's responsibility to the source author/witness, and how this is complicated in the case of fictionalized testimonies.

Awards and Funding

▪ Doctoral Fellowship in Hispanics Studies, University of Warwick, 2016-2020

▪ Callum MacDonald Memorial Award, University of Warwick, 2017

▪ Global Research Priorities Conference Bursary, University of Warwick, 2017

▪ PEN/Heim Fund for Literary Translation, PEN Literary Awards, 2017

▪ Arts Foundation shortlist grant for Literary Translation, Arts Foundation, 2016

▪ Emerging Translator Mentorship, British Centre for Literary Translation, 2015

Selected Translations

• José Revueltas, The Hole, (New Directions, forthcoming in co-translation with Amanda Hopkinson)

• Rodrigo Hasbún, Affections, (Pushkin Press / Simon & Schuster, 2016 / 2017)

• Laia Jufresa, Umami, (Oneworld Publications, 2016
)

• 
Iván Repila, The Boy Who Stole Attila’s Horse, (Pushkin Press, 2015)

Sophie Hughes

S dot Hughes dot 5 at warwick dot ac dot uk