The French-American Foundation's 2023 Translation Prize Winners

The French-American Foundation’s Translation Prize is in its 36th year, and has three winners from its two categories of fiction and nonfiction.

At an event of the French-American Foundation. Image: FAF

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

An Awards Ceremony Is Set for May 23

The French-American Foundation has announced its winners in the 2023 edition of its French-t0-English Translation Prize, with an awards ceremony set for May 23 in New York City.

The winners are drawn from a shortlist of 10 finalists, and this is an awards regime aimed squarely at honoring translators. The program, in operation since 1986, provides US$10,000 each to the translator of a work of fiction and to a translator of nonfiction. Those 10 shortlistees are divided between the two categories.

This year’s jury includes:

Yasser Elhariry of Dartmouth College
Emmanuelle Ertel of New York University
Tess Lewis, essayist and translator
Corine Tachtiris of the University of Massachusetts
Lindsay Turner of Case Western Reserve University
Alyson Waters, a translator

This year’s competition cycle opened on November 1 last year and closed on January 13.

And in this case, the two winning works have produced three translators.

Winning Translators of the 2023 French-American Prize

The 10 finalists in the shortlist for this year’s edition of the French-American Translation Prize in fiction and nonfiction

Fiction

Translator Juliet Sutcliffe

The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont (Biblioasis)

Nonfiction

Translators Kieran Aarons and Cédrine Michel

Self Defense: A Philosophy of Violence by Elsa Dorlin (Verso Books)

Kaplan to Speak at Ceremony

In the program on May 23, Alice Kaplan–Yale’s Sterling Professor of French–will speak as a special guest in this program, the $20,000 combined annual purse of which is funded by the Florence Gould Foundation.

The program on May 23 is to be held at Hearst Tower, the Joseph Urban Theatre on 8th Avenue in New York.

More from Publishing Perspectives on translators and translation is here, more on book and publishing awards programs is here, and more on French publishing and French-language work is here.

About the Author

Porter Anderson

Porter Anderson is a non-resident fellow of Trends Research & Advisory, and he has been named International Trade Press Journalist of the Year in London Book Fair's International Excellence Awards. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives. He formerly was Associate Editor for The FutureBook at London's The Bookseller. Anderson was for more than a decade a senior producer and anchor with CNN.com, CNN International, and CNN USA. As an arts critic (Fellow, National Critics Institute), he was with The Village Voice, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Tampa Tribune, now the Tampa Bay Times. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman.