The American Literary Translators Association has announced the fifteen-title-strong longlist for its 2014 National Translation Award; see also the official press release (warning ! dreaded pdf format !).
The NTA is a translator-prize -- US$5,000, all for the translator -- and: "includes a rigorous examination of the source text and its relation to the finished English work". (The criteria do have their own fun quirks: titles can have been: "published anywhere in the world" (i.e. don't have to have been published -- or, apparently, even made available in the US), but they do have to have been: "translated by an American citizen or permanent resident".)
One thing stands out among the fifteen longlisted titles: the absence of any 'Big Five' publishers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the only semi-sizable publisher on the independent- and university-press dominated list. Which suggests to me, yet again, that for all the apparent inroads literature-in-translation may appear to be making in the US market, a lot of those are peripheral side roads. Yes, it's great what these smaller presses are doing with and in translation -- but there's a problem when the big players aren't in this mix at all.
Several of the longlisted titles are under review at the complete review (oddly, three of the four university press titles -- and none of the others):
The NTA is a translator-prize -- US$5,000, all for the translator -- and: "includes a rigorous examination of the source text and its relation to the finished English work". (The criteria do have their own fun quirks: titles can have been: "published anywhere in the world" (i.e. don't have to have been published -- or, apparently, even made available in the US), but they do have to have been: "translated by an American citizen or permanent resident".)
One thing stands out among the fifteen longlisted titles: the absence of any 'Big Five' publishers. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the only semi-sizable publisher on the independent- and university-press dominated list. Which suggests to me, yet again, that for all the apparent inroads literature-in-translation may appear to be making in the US market, a lot of those are peripheral side roads. Yes, it's great what these smaller presses are doing with and in translation -- but there's a problem when the big players aren't in this mix at all.
Several of the longlisted titles are under review at the complete review (oddly, three of the four university press titles -- and none of the others):
- The African Shore, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated by Jeffrey Gray
- The Girl with the Golden Parasol, Uday Prakash, translated by Jason Grunebaum
- Light and Dark Natsume Sōseki, translated by John Nathan