Isabel Adey is an experienced literary translator and bilingual editor working primarily with Spanish, German and English.

She holds an MSc in Translation (Heriot-Watt University, 2011) and an MA in Modern European Languages (University of Edinburgh, 2009, first class with distinction) and has taught translation to postgraduate level. She is currently posted as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2025-2027).

Her forthcoming translation of 98 Seconds Without a Shadow by cult Bolivian writer Giovanna Rivero won a PEN Translates Award in 2026. She has been twice nominated for the Queen Sofia Translation Prize for the best English translation of a work originally written in Spanish (Giovanna Rivero’s Fresh Dirt from the Grave made the longlist in 2024, following the shortlisting of her co-translation with Charlotte Coombe of Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze in 2023). She is also a former winner of the Goethe Institute’s Emerging Translator Programme (2014) for her work from German into English.

Her work spans multiple disciplines, from literary fiction to nonfiction, academia, and children’s books/YA fiction. She is interested in writing that deals with cultural identity, class politics and migration. She is a respected, meticulous editor of translations, having worked on publications for a number of indie presses such as V&Q Books, MTO Press and Foundry Editions.

She is currently translating Laura Ortiz Gómez’s short story collection, Sofoco.