Translation Prizes 2008

Over at the Literary Saloon Michael Orthofer has a great summary about the 2008 “Translation Prizes,” lamenting the generic name and overall lack of coverage:

We realise it’s sort of an umbrella-designation — the six prizes do come with their own names and/or sponsors — but it still seems way too vague to us.

A bit more publicity couldn’t hurt either: yes, sites like the Translators Association of the Society of Authors have some information (though none about this years winners, last we checked . . .), but for the most part you’re hard-pressed to find any. They seemed to have a nice poster for the event too — but the only place we could find it depicted was here, in that tiny size.

Thankfully he does provide a list of the winners though:

• The Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for translation from Arabic, which went to Fady Joudah for his translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry collections in The Butterfly’s Burden.

• The Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation from French went to Frank Wynne for his translations of Holiday in a Coma & Love Lasts Three Years by Frédéric Beigbeder.

• The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from German went to Ian Fairley for his translation of Snow Part by Paul Celan.

• The Hellenic Foundation for Culture Translation Prize for translation from modern Greek went to Roderick Beaton for his translation of A Levant Journal by George Seferis.

• The John Florio Prize for translation from Italian went to Peter Robinson for his translation of The Greener Meadow by Luciano Erba.

• The Premio Valle-Inclán for translation from Spanish went to Nick Caistor for his translation of The Past by Alan Pauls.