Tournée de Christophe Lebold © IFC

Share on

Translation Assistance Programme

Each year, the Institut français du Canada provides financial support to Canadian publishers who wish to translate texts by French authors that have already been published by French publishing houses. In 2025, the French Institute of Canada awarded two grants of €3,000. 
Projects may be of various kinds (literature, humanities, poetry, comics, children's books, theater). Publishers wishing to respond to this call must first have signed a contract with a translator. The cultural department will judge projects on the following criteria:

  • the intrinsic quality of the work and its artistic and intellectual importance in France.
  • the foreign publisher's commitment to the translation and ongoing publication of French authors.
  • the foreign publisher's commitment to the distribution and promotion of the work.

Terms and conditions of participation – Eligibility criteria

The translation assistance program is open to any professional Canadian publisher not involved in public (or similar) publishing, provided that they publish in English the translation of a work written by one or more French or French-speaking authors.

Each publisher may submit no more than three applications per session. Applications must be submitted after the rights have been purchased and the contract with the translator has been signed.

All genres are eligible except for school textbooks. The planned print run must be at least 1,000 copies.

Only complete applications that meet the eligibility criteria will be reviewed by the expert committee. The list of required documents is provided at the end of the application form.

Recipients' commitments

Supported works must be published within 18 months of signing the agreement. In exceptional cases, an additional non-renewable extension may be granted upon justified request submitted more than three months before the end of the 18-month period.

Any publisher receiving support must send three copies of the supported work to the Institut français du Canada within one month of publication.

The following statement must appear on the page opposite the title page: “The publication of this work was supported by the Institut français du Canada,” followed by the Institut français du Canada logo.

Non-exhaustive list of works that have benefited from this programme

2025

  • The Furrow by Valérie Manteau  by Valérie Manteau (Le Tripode, 2018) translated by Claire Foster, published by Invisible Publishing.
  • Henri and the Secret Sender  by Fanny Ducassé (Seuil Jeunesse, 2022) translated by David Warriner, published by Greystone Books.

2024

2023 : 

2022 :

2021 : 

2020 :