They've announced that this year's winner of the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize -- "awarded each spring to honor an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the USA the previous year" -- is Philip Boehm, for his translation of Gregor von Rezzori's An Ermine in Czernopol, published by New York Review Books Classics; see their publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
So why, you ask, was such a fine translation not on the Best Translated Book shortlist, or even the longlist ? It's an eligibility issue: the BTBA only considers first-time translations, and Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol was published as The Hussar in Catherine Hutter's translation in 1960.
( A re-translation ? A book in translation by a dead author ? You know what that means ! it's the rare kind of book in translation that stood a reasonable chance of getting coverage in The New York Times Book Review under Sam Tanenhaus' watch ! (New translations, and books by living authors in translation stood, at very best, a very unreasonable chance .....) And look here ! -- they did review it !) [Sorry, no: despite Tanenhaus' departure I'm not going to let them forget their failings at the NYTBR any time soon -- especially not if nothing changes; see my last mention.]
As to the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize: a reminder that this is how you do it: they publish a full list of all the submissions -- i.,e. the titles that are in the running -- so we all know what the winning translation beat out. (As I frequently complain, far too few literary prizes do this -- not the Pulitzers or National Book Awards, not the Man Booker, etc. -- though the National Book Critics Circle Award is more or less receptive to anything (but unfortunately don't publish any sort of list of what they've actually looked at); the BTBA, too, covers all eligible translations from the previous year -- the Translation Database pretty much lists the contenders (but hasn't been updated in a while, and doesn't exactly correlate to the actual BTBA-eligible list).)
The submissions list also yields some interesting facts -- such as that almost a third of the entries are from ... AmazonCrossing (eleven out of the thrity-seven entries). Behind them is Seagull Books with four. So much for any commitment to translation from the big US publishers .....
So why, you ask, was such a fine translation not on the Best Translated Book shortlist, or even the longlist ? It's an eligibility issue: the BTBA only considers first-time translations, and Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol was published as The Hussar in Catherine Hutter's translation in 1960.
( A re-translation ? A book in translation by a dead author ? You know what that means ! it's the rare kind of book in translation that stood a reasonable chance of getting coverage in The New York Times Book Review under Sam Tanenhaus' watch ! (New translations, and books by living authors in translation stood, at very best, a very unreasonable chance .....) And look here ! -- they did review it !) [Sorry, no: despite Tanenhaus' departure I'm not going to let them forget their failings at the NYTBR any time soon -- especially not if nothing changes; see my last mention.]
As to the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize: a reminder that this is how you do it: they publish a full list of all the submissions -- i.,e. the titles that are in the running -- so we all know what the winning translation beat out. (As I frequently complain, far too few literary prizes do this -- not the Pulitzers or National Book Awards, not the Man Booker, etc. -- though the National Book Critics Circle Award is more or less receptive to anything (but unfortunately don't publish any sort of list of what they've actually looked at); the BTBA, too, covers all eligible translations from the previous year -- the Translation Database pretty much lists the contenders (but hasn't been updated in a while, and doesn't exactly correlate to the actual BTBA-eligible list).)
The submissions list also yields some interesting facts -- such as that almost a third of the entries are from ... AmazonCrossing (eleven out of the thrity-seven entries). Behind them is Seagull Books with four. So much for any commitment to translation from the big US publishers .....