Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular English-speaking world, there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk. But there are many benefits to widening our pool of working translators, not least because new translators often lead us to meet new writers. More than half of the books submitted for the TA first translation prize are debuts for their translators as well as English-language debuts for their authors, showing that translators are in the vanguard of literary change.