Isabel Adey is a literary translator and bilingual editor working 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 joins the Royal Literary Fund as a Fellow from September 2025.

She was longlisted two years in a row for the Queen Sofia Translation Prize for the best English translation of a work originally written in Spanish (for Giovanna Rivero’s Fresh Dirt from the Grave in 2024 and for her co-translation with Charlotte Coombe of Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze, which also made it onto the shortlist 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 Giovanna Rivero’s cult novel, 98 Seconds Without a Shadow, for Charco Press.