Charlotte Coombe is an award-winning British translator working from Spanish, French and Catalan into English. After a decade translating creative texts in gastronomy, the arts, travel and tourism, lifestyle, fashion and advertising, her love of literature drew her to literary translation, with a particular interest in women’s writing. She translates fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She has received various awards and short-listings for her translations.

She has translated over a dozen fiction and non-fiction titles including: Abnousse Shalmani’s Khomeini, Sade and Me (World Editions, 2016), which was awarded a PEN Translates grant; The President’s Room by Argentinian author Ricardo Romero (Charco Press, 2017); a collection of novellas and short stories by Margarita García Robayo, published as Fish Soup (Charco Press, 2019); Eduardo Berti’s novel The Imagined Land (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2018); Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo (Charco Press, 2020) which also won a PEN Translates award; Marvel Moreno’s December Breeze, co-translated with Isabel Adey (Europa Editions, 2022) and shortlisted for the QSSI Translation Prize 2023.; the nonfiction books The Seaweed Revolution by Vincent Doumeizel (Legend Press, 2023) and At 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré by Frédéric Laffont, co-translated with Tina Kover (L’Iconoclaste, 2024). Most recently, she translated Far by Rosa Ribas (Foundry Editions, 2024).

In autumn 2025, Foundry Editions will publish Killing the Nerve by Anna Pazos, her first co-translation from Catalan (with Laura McGloughlin).

Her translations of short stories and poetry by writers such as Antonio Díaz Oliva, Juan Villoro, Santiago Roncagliolo, Rosamaría Roffiel, Edgardo Nuñez Caballero, Jimena González and Marvel Moreno have been published in anthologies and renowned literary journals. 

She recently also received the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award for Literary Translation for the translation from Spanish of Antonio Díaz Oliva’s story, “Mrs. Gonçalves and the Lives of Others,” which featured in the spring issue of The Southern Review in 2022.

She has translated work by authors such as Marvel Moreno, Antonio Diaz Oliva, Orlando Echeverri Benedetti, Lucía Baskaran, Elizabeth Duval, Juan Villoro, Emma Deruschi, Rosa María Roffiel, Santiago Roncagliolo, Edgardo Nuñez Caballero, Jimena González and Aminata Aidara. Her translations have appeared in publications such as The Southern Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, and Latin American Literature Today.

In 2020, she co-founded the YouTube channel Translators Aloud, shining the spotlight on literary translators reading from their published work, or work seeking a publisher in English.

As well as translating literature, working as CMC Translations, she provides transcreation, proofreading, editing and revising on a daily basis for various private clients and agencies.