Moving Words

       Moving Words -- what a great idea:

Reflecting New Zealand's multi-ethnic and multilingual society, our competition aims to celebrate literature, languages and cultures [...] and to inspire and reward excellence in literary translation

       The words I left out ? It's a secondary school prize. How awesome is that ?
       Sure, it's limited to pieces of poetry or prose no longer than 400 words (a pretty small sample), but still ......
       Very cool, too: translations can be into English, te reo Māori, or New Zealand Sign Language.
       And they got Man Booker Prize-winner (and The Rehearsal-author) Eleanor Catton to chair the judging.
       So, yeah: I'm impressed.
       See also the New Zealand Book Council press release.

       And how about it, British Centre for Literary Translation (in the UK) or PEN Translation Committee and American Literary Translators Association (in the US) ? Wouldn't a translation prize for secondary/high school students be a pretty good idea ? I mean a really, really good idea ? (Especially if you can get some big name translators to play along, to get some decent press coverage.) Think about it, okay ? I mean, getting upstaged by ... New Zealand in the translation arena -- come on, show them you can do this sort of thing too !