Archive update — November 6, 2026: The autumn 2026 filing window for CNL translation export support has closed. The official programme page still lists September 17–October 29, 2026, with examination scheduled for January/February 2027. That is a published timetable, not a promise of a decision or award. This article preserves the session as a workflow reference, not an invitation to apply now.
Separate responsibility from enthusiasm
The programme page places the application with the French publisher that transferred the rights. The linked SUB 10 regulation also allows eligible literary agents holding translation rights. The foreign publisher is not simply an interchangeable applicant.
For a rights team, the useful planning tool is a responsibility sheet: one person owns filing, another gathers the foreign-edition information, and the translator agrees the sample and contract schedule. Record who must supply each item and who checks the complete file. Agreement that a book deserves translation does not allocate that work.
What the session's dossier required
The official page specifies an original text, matching original and translation extracts, rights and translator contracts, translator credentials, and foreign-publisher distribution information. Its translation sample is 20 percent of the work, capped at 20 numbered pages, without the translator's name. This summary is not the full submission checklist.
The regulation excludes relay translation and requires valid rights at commission examination. Publication must not precede examination. Those conditions explain why the sample, rights term and edition schedule need to be considered together rather than handed between teams at the last minute.
Keep the useful workflow; recheck the rules
- Name the filing owner. Do not leave an application sitting between two publishers because each expects the other to submit it.
- Make one document inventory. Track the owner, version and outstanding question for every contract, sample and distribution document.
- Compare calendars. Put the rights term, sample delivery and planned edition date on the same sheet so conflicts become visible.
- Read the operative terms again for any later session. Do not carry this archive's dates or document summary into a new application unchanged.
This archive does not establish eligibility, an award amount or payment entitlement for a later application. Check CNL's official programme and operative regulation for the session concerned. No firsthand filing or award outcome is claimed here.
For related workflow guidance, see the translation contracts baseline and rights-partner and manuscript-sharing checks. To discuss a rights or translation project, contact Rex Publishing.
The lasting lesson is administrative: give the French-side applicant, foreign publisher and translator a shared file and an explicit division of work. The autumn window is closed; that coordination lesson remains useful.