Translation & Linguistic Rights Committee
The International PEN Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee was established in Stockholm in 1978 at International PEN's 43rd Congress. Originally called the Programme and Translation Committee, it aimed to encourage and promote the translation of literature from smaller languages into major world languages (including the three official languages of International PEN - English, French and Spanish) and as a consequence, into many other languages, both widely-spoken and small languages, besides.
The current Chair is Professor Kata Kulavkova, based at the Macedonian PEN Centre. International PEN Centers with Translation & Linguistic Rights Committees have signed the International Declaration of Linguistic Rights.
The Uyghur PEN Translation and Linguistic Committee, in coordination with the parallel organ in the International PEN Center, other organizations for Human rights and other PEN Centers, translates outstanding literary works in Uyghur into the other nationals' languages, and outstanding literary work in other nationals' languages into Uyghur.
The committee protects languages that do not have a national homestead, and fully supports the incorporation of the PEN Centers proclamation on language rights into the UN declaration of the Human rights: every person has the right to, within the scope permitted by law in the country where that person resides, use the language spoken by the social group or ethnic minority which that person belongs to or has chose to belong to, and which has been acknowledged by the country in question.
