A graduate student of literary translation sees a publishing house as a sanctuary. Or this used to be the case until not long ago, anyway. Specialised translation is a job. Literary translation is a calling.
            Translation of poetry is the trickiest of them all. It requires the translator to understand the meaning entirely—no word can be neglected. One usually translates best into one's mother tongue.
             It may be for the first time that a British poets meet the students of a large university. Poets belonging to the well known group poetry p f, run by the poet and literary agent ANNE STEWART, worked with the students of the University of Bucharest, the MA Programme for the Translation of the Literary Text. The result was magic. It brought poetry into the lives of about one hundred students. And this is only the beginning.
            Pauline Kirk's volume was translated as part of the dissertation with which the student Andreea–Bianca Matei graduated from MTTLC [The MA Programme for the Translation of the Contemporary Literary Text] at the University of Bucharest.

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                Pentru studenții unui masterat de traducere literară, editura este un loc râvnit. Traducerile specializate sunt o slujbă: traducerea literaturii este o vocație.
              Traducerea de poezie este cea mai buclucașă dintre toate. Traducătorul nu are voie să lase niciun cuvânt netranspus. De obicei, traducătorul literar traduce în limba lui maternă.
               Probabil pentru prima oară, poeții britanici s–au întâlnit cu viitorii lor traducători, încă studenți la o universitate de renume. Poeții din foarte cunoscutul grup poetry p f, al poetei și agentei literare ANNE STEWART, au lucrat împreună cu studenții Masteratului pentru Traducerea Textului Literar Contemporan, Universitatea din București. A fost un moment magic. Poezia a coborât în viețile a o sută de studenți. Iar acesta nu este decât începutul...
               Volumul lui Pauline Kirk a fost tradus în cadrul dizertației masterale cu care studenta Andreea–Bianca Matei a absolvit MTTLC.

Translation Café started in the year 2007, as the magazine of the MA Programme for the Translation of the Contemporary Literary Text (MTTLC), at the University of Bucharest.

The eZINE consists of translations made by graduate students of MTTLC, as a prolongation of their activity in class. They are meant to give the graduates a taste of their future profession, and also to increase their sense of responsibility for a translation they sign under their own name. The result often goes into a volume published by Contemporary Literature Press, http://editura.mttlc.ro/

The texts are translated from or into English, and belong to all literary genres – fiction, poetry, literary criticism, drama, essay. The focus is on Modern Literature, broadly meaning the 20th and the 21st centuries: Romanian, British, American among others.