Translation Shortlists, Spring 2015

Well, the Best Translated Book Award won’t be announcing its shortlists for another two weeks (suspense!), but meanwhile here are three others to keep you busy:

1. The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation has been narrowed down to:

  • Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon (Action Books), translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi
  • I Am the Beggar of the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), translated from the Pashto by Eliza Griswold
  • Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz by Juana Inés de la Cruz (W. W. Norton & Company), translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman
  • Breathturn into Timestead by Paul Celan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), translated from the German by Pierre Joris
  • Guantanamo by Frank Smith (Les Figues Press), translated from the French by Vanessa Place

2. The PEN Translation Prize shortlist looks like this:

  • The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla (New York Review Books), translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush
  • The Symmetry Teacher by Andrei Bitov (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon
  • Baboon by Naja Marie Aidt (Two Lines Press), translated from the Danish by Denise Newman
  • Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa (Deep Vellum Publishing), translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee
  • Self-Portrait in Green by Marie NDiaye (Two Lines Press), translated from the French by Jordan Stump

3. And here’s the shortlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (the one in which Translationista has a horse in the race):

  • The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (Portobello Books)
  • In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomás González translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne (Pushkin Press)
  • F by Daniel Kehlmann, translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway (Quercus)
  • By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel translated from the Spanish by Jethro Soutar (And Other Stories)
  • While the Gods Were Sleeping by Erwin Mortier translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent (Pushkin Press)
  • Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel (Harvill Secker)

If you’re holding your breath on any of these, you’ll have to keep doing so until May 13 for the PEN awards or May 27 for the Independent. (Translationista officially recommends against breath-holding. Surely there are better options for passing the time. For example, you could translate something.)

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