Guildhall School of Business and Law staff profiles content store_hidden Peter Freeth Our staff

Peter completed a BA (Hons) in German at the University of Leeds in 2016, where he stayed to undertake an MA in Applied Translation Studies 2017 and a PhD, which he completed in 2022. Since submitting his PhD, Peter has worked as a Teaching Fellow in Translation at both the University of Leeds (2021-22) and Aston University (2022-23), as well as provided external marking at supervision for German-speaking translation studies students at Goldsmiths, University of London (2022-23).

Alongside his academic work, Peter has worked as both a freelance and in-house translator within a multinational LSP specialising in creative and marketing content, as well as technical texts. He has also worked with German-based publisher V&Q Books to promote their English-language translations of remarkable writing from Germany and to run translation workshops for UG and MA level students across Britain and Ireland.

Peter joined London Metropolitan University as Senior Lecturer in Translation in August 2023.

Peter is course leader for the BA Translation course and so teaches translation studies at all levels of this undergraduate programme. His current teaching covers introductory linguistics and cultural studies modules at level 4; practical translation classes and cultural approaches at level 5; and translation theory and oversight of the final year translation project at level 6. He also supervises research dissertations in translation for students on the BA and MA programmes.

Peter is primarily interested in the ways that translators and translation are made visible in contemporary Anglophone culture, with a particular focus on sociological approaches and digital/social media. Common themes that span his research outputs are how translators can make themselves visible, how the visibilities of translation relate to the reception of translated texts, and how underlying systems of power both influence and are demonstrated through these (in)visibilities.

He has also published work on the ethics and impact of digitization on archives of translation and translators, reflecting his interest in the impact of digital and online technology on existing research paradigms and methodologies.

Alongside his own research, Peter has co-edited the volume “Beyond the translator’s invisibility”, published with Leuven University Press (2024), and is part of a guest editorial team for issue 3:1 of Translation in Society, entitled “Literary translatorship in digital contexts”.

• Freeth, Peter J., and Rafael Treviño. (eds). (2024). Beyond the Translator’s Invisibility: Critical Reflections and New Perspectives. Leuven: Leuven University Press. https://lup.be/collections/series-translation-interpreting-and-transfer/products/234877 
• Translations Kaindl, Klaus. (2024). Visibilities of translation – Visibilities of translators: Reflections on the theoretical foundations of an opaque concept. In: Freeth, Peter J., and Rafael Treviño, eds. Beyond the Translator’s Invisibility: Critical Reflections and New Perspectives. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 31-48. https://lup.be/collections/series-translation-interpreting-and-transfer/products/234877 
• Freeth, Peter J. (2024). “Yes: I translated it!”: Visibility and the performance of translatorship in the digital paratextual space. In: Freeth, Peter J., and Rafael Treviño, eds. Beyond the Translator’s Invisibility: Critical Reflections and New Perspectives. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 147-172. https://lup.be/collections/series-translation-interpreting-and-transfer/products/234877 
• Freeth, Peter J. 2023. Peripheral vision and challenging invisibilities: Theoretical and methodological reflections on the “digitized turn” and “born-digital” sources in archives of translation and translators. Translation in Society 2(2), pp. 213-234. https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.23008.fre
• Freeth, Peter J. 2023. Between consciously crafted and the vastness of context: collateral paratextuality and its implications for translation studies. Translation Studies 16(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2023.2194882
• Freeth, Peter J. (2022). Beyond invisibility: The position and role of the literary translator in the digital paratextual space. PhD thesis, University of Leeds. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/30818/ 
• Freeth, Peter J. 2021. “Germany asks: is it OK to laugh at Hitler?” Translating humour and Germanness in the paratexts of Er ist wieder da and Look Who’s Back. Translation Spaces 10(1), pp. 115-137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ts.20003.fre
• Freeth, Peter J. 2021. Conceptualising the role of the translator in the global circulation of literature: The case of Look Who’s Back and Jamie Bulloch’s translatorship. Trans: Revue de Littérature Générale et Comparée 16. http://dx.doi.org/10.4000/trans.6564 

Peter was awarded an Arts and Humanaties Research Council (AHRC) Competition PhD Studentship (2018-2022) for the project "Beyond invisibility: The position and role of the literary translator in the digital paratextual space".

In 2023, Peter was awarded the Martha Cheung Award for Best English Article in Translation Studies by an Early Career Scholar for the article ‘“Germany asks: Is it OK to laugh at Hitler?” Translating humour and Germanness in the paratexts of Er ist wieder da and Look Who’s Back’, published in Translation Spaces 10(1) (2021): https://www.sisubakercentre.org/martha-cheung-award-2023-winner-and-two-runners-up/ 

Peter is an incoming Assistant Editor for the journal Translation in Society (from spring 2024) https://benjamins.com/catalog/tris 

Dr Peter J Freeth
Senior Lecturer in Translation
BA Translation Course Leader
p.freeth@londonmet.ac.uk