July 2022 translation news roundup
Our monthly roundup of translation and publishing news, plus updates in literature and arts education you may have missed!
Prizes
The annual Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize(opens in a new tab) is now open for entry, with Indonesian announced as the focus language for 2022. Entry is open to anyone between the ages of 18 and 34, with entrants having no more than one full-length literary translation previously published. There is no restriction on country of residence.
The Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation(opens in a new tab) awards a talented translator of South Asian literature into English with the publication of their outstanding manuscript. The prize just launched this month, and submissions will be open until December 31, 2022.
The winners of the 2022 Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators(opens in a new tab) were announced this month. An initiative of the Queen’s College at the University of Oxford, the competition ran across 4 levels in 5 languages, and was open to students aged 11 to 18.
Anam Zafar won the 2021 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation(opens in a new tab) for her work on four stories from Najat Abed Alsamad’s In the Tenderness of War.
News
The UK’s National Centre for Writing is seeking applications from translators into English for the 2022/23 NCW Emerging Translator Mentorship program(opens in a new tab). The program matches up experienced translators with emerging translators for a six-month period during which they work together on practical translation projects, developing their craft through working on a chosen text or texts. Translators need not live in the UK to apply, with the exception of the Visible Communities mentorship. The deadline to apply is August 31, 2022.
Reading List
Mona Kareem on Translation(opens in a new tab) — In her talk commissioned by the British Centre for Literary Translation, Kareem balances the discussion of craft with a discussion of the politics of translation, including issues around the terminologies related to translation and the intertwined art and labor of literary translation.
People of the Long Word(opens in a new tab) — Thoughts on Georgian language, literature, and translation
Blunt Clarity(opens in a new tab) — Tove Ditlevsen’s unsentimental education
Modern Poetry in Translation’s summer issue, “The Previous Song: Focus on Somali Poetry,”(opens in a new tab) was released this month.
“Writing Is About Connection”(opens in a new tab) — A conversation with Jenny Bhatt
Always Against(opens in a new tab) — On translating the punk rock lyrics of Igor Etov
An interview with Damion Searls(opens in a new tab), an International Booker Prize-shortlisted translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch and a writer in English.
A Call to Wake Up(opens in a new tab) — On Shushan Avagyan’s translation of Viktor Shklovsky’s “On the Theory of Prose”
The Penguin Book of Indian Poets(opens in a new tab) — A new anthology lays bare a ruptured age in verse, straddling the social and political to record the historical.
