Dispatches from the World of Literary Translation

The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) has just announced the longlists for the 2016 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose. The NTA has been around for 18 years, though this is only the second year in which the separate prizes have been offered for poetry and prose. Unlike most translation awards, the NTA judging process includes a round in which the translation is compared to the original by an expert proficient in the language in question.

The NTA comes with an award of $2500 in each category (to be announced at the ALTA conference). Shortlists will be published in September. This year’s judges are Adriana Jacobs, Karen Kovacik, and Cole Swensen (poetry) and Karen Emmerich, Andrea Labinger, and Marian Schwartz (prose). Over the next few weeks, the judges will be publishing brief reports on the longlisted books on the ALTA blog.

Here are this year’s longlists:

Poetry:

Blackbirds in September: Selected Shorter Poems
By Jürgen Becker (Germany)
Translated from the German by Okla Elliott
(Black Lawrence Press)

I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky
By Arseny Tarkovsky
Translated from the Russian by Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev
(The Cleveland State University Poetry Center)

Minute-Operas
By Frédéric Forte (France)
Translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom, Jean-Jacques Poucel
(Burning Deck)

Rilke Shake
By Angélica Freitas (Brazil)
Translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan
(Phoneme Media)

Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal
By Charles Baudelaire (France)
Translated from the French by Jan Owen
(Arc Publications)

The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems
By Natalia Toledo (Mexico)
Translated from the Isthmus Zapotec and Spanish by Clare Sullivan
(Phoneme Media)

The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa
By Chika Sagawa (Japan)
Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu
(Canarium Books)

The Country of Planks
By Raúl Zurita (Chile)
Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky
(Action Books)

This Blue Novel
By Valerie Mejer Caso (Mexico)
Translated from the Spanish by Michelle Gil-Montero
(Action Books)

White Blight
By Athena Farrokhzad (Sweden)
Translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida
(Argos Books)

 

Prose:

Adventures in Immediate Irreality
By Max Blecher
Translated from the Romanian by Michael Henry Heim
(New Directions)

Leg over Leg
By Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (Lebanon)
Translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies
(Library of Arabic Literature/NYU Press)

Lovers on All Saints’ Day
By Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Translated from the Spanish by Ann Maclean
(Riverhead Books)

Stammered Songbook: A Mother’s Book of Hours
By Erwin Mortier (Belgium)
Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
(Pushkin Press)

The Blizzard
By Vladimir Sorokin (Russia)
Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
By Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
Translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson
(New Directions)

The Hotel Years
By Joseph Roth
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
(New Directions)

The Meursault Investigation
By Kamel Daoud (Algeria)
Translated from the French by John Cullen
(Other Press)

The Physics of Sorrow
By Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria)
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
(Open Letter Books)

The Story of My Teeth
By Valeria Luiselli (Mexico)
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
(Coffee House Press)

Tristano Dies: A Life
By Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris
(Archipelago Books)

Congratulations to all the longlisted translators!

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