They've announced the shortlist for this year's Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize -- eight titles, rather than the usual six, "in recognition of the high quality of this year's translations and the large number of entries (151)" (alas, what those entries were is not revealed; transparency, people, transparency !).
The prize is: "for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language" -- so no limitations as to genre, re-translation, or whether or not the author is living. But only European languages need apply (and apparently a lot did ...).
One of the odd consequences is that (European) colonial languages are embraced -- Canadian/Haitian author Dany Laferrière's translated-from-the-French The Enigma of the Return (originally published in English, in Canada, as The Return) is a finalist -- but books translated from local, non-European languages aren't .....
Only two shortlisted titles are under review at the complete review:
The prize is: "for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language" -- so no limitations as to genre, re-translation, or whether or not the author is living. But only European languages need apply (and apparently a lot did ...).
One of the odd consequences is that (European) colonial languages are embraced -- Canadian/Haitian author Dany Laferrière's translated-from-the-French The Enigma of the Return (originally published in English, in Canada, as The Return) is a finalist -- but books translated from local, non-European languages aren't .....
Only two shortlisted titles are under review at the complete review:
- In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge, translated by Anthea Bell
- The Conductor and Other Tales by Jean Ferry, translated by Edward Gauvin