By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also: UK: The $50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize Names Its Shortlist
Another Book Contest Looks for Performance
Since our September announcement of the longlisted titles in the American Literary Translators Association‘s 2024 National Translation Awards, we’ve been pleased to hear from Rachael Daum, the communications and awards manager with the United States’ National Translation Awards, that she’s keen to begin providing input from these “ALTA”-winning titles about their performance in the marketplace after a win from ALTA’s highly regarded honor.
As it happens, today (October 10), there’s similar shortlist anticipation from another prominent book award, the United Kingdom’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, where executive director Toby Mundy, intends to research and report—on his own choice of timing and criteria after his awards—the impact of a Baillie Gifford Prize win.
In the aggregate, efforts of these kinds—to discern and evaluate the marketplce effects of a prize win—can establish some parameters of expecatation and actual influence, leading, presumably, to more clear-eyed enthusiasm—an honest appraisal of the impact of a “golden sticker” on a book cover, in terms of how much awards actually count.
And with ALTA’s focus on translation, particularly in the United States, it could be instructive to know if and how much an award might influence marketplace perceptions of translated work. The value of translation in literature has never been self-evident to broad swaths of many populations, and having actual numbers on how much an award might impact print-runs, unit sales, and so on, could be invaluable.
On the way to that opportunity, ALTA’s shortlists in prose and poetry are out today, with each of the two winners is to receive US$4,000 in this competition, which was founded in 1998.
Corine Tachtiris
In a comment on the release of the two shortlists, ALTA’s vice-president, Corine Tachtiris, says, “Our judges had the very difficult task of narrowing down this year’s submissions to these two shortlists of impressive translations, ranging from the intimate to the epic in scale.
“In a year in which AI is dominating the headlines, these translations attest that AI will never be able to replace the artistry, nuance, and risk that characterizes the work of human translators.”
Winners are to be named on October 26 at an awards ceremony in ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA: Voices in Translation.
National Translation Award in Prose 2024 Shortlist
Image: ALTA
Jurors for this year’s prose entries are Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and Poupeh Missaghi.
The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild
- By Mathias Énard
- Translated from French by Frank Wynne
- New Directions (USA), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK)
Cold Nights of Childhood
- By Tezer Özlü
- Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely
- Transit Books
The End of August
- By Yu Miri
- Translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles
- Riverhead Books (USA), Tilted Axis Press (UK)
The Hunger of Women
- By Marosia Castaldi
- Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
- And Other Stories
Not Even the Dead
- By Juan Gómez Bárcena
- Translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore
- Open Letter Books
Whale
- By Cheon Myeong-kwan
- Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
- Archipelago Books (USA), Europa Editions (UK)
National Translation Award in Poetry 2024 Shortlist
The jurors in the poetry category for 2024 are Kazim Ali, Ronnie Apter, and Mary Jo Bang.
And the Street
- By Pierre Alferi
- Translated from French by Cole Swensen
- Green Linden Press
Central American Book of the Dead
- By Balam Rodrigo
- Translated from Spanish by Dan Bellm
- FlowerSong Press
A Friend’s Kitchen
- By Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
- Translated from Arabic by Bryar Bajalan with the poet Shook
- The Poetry Translation Centre
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
- By Ovid
- Translated from Latin by C. Luke Soucy
- University of California Press
Shining Sheep
- By Ulrike Almut Sandig
- Translated from German by Karen Leeder
- Seagull Books
Winter King
- By Ostap Slyvynsky
- Translated from Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova
- Lost Horse Press
More from Publishing Perspectives on translation is here, more from us on the American Literary Translators Association is here, and on publishing and book awards is here.