Every year the Goethe Institut awards two prizes to translators from the German, one, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, a prestigious award with a $10,000 purse that honors a master translator, and one, the Gutekunst Prize for Emerging Translators, for a relative newcomer (applicants must be under 35) that is designed to pave the way to a promising career and comes with a $2500 purse. For the Gutekunst competition, all applicants submit a translation of the same work for easy comparison.
This year’s Wolff Prize has gone to Daniel Bowles for his translation of Christian Kracht’s Imperium published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2015.
This year’s Gutekunst Prize has gone to Laura Caton. The book used for the Gutekunst sample this year was Drohnenland (Drone State) by Tom Hillenbrand (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2014).
Both prizes will be awarded at a ceremony at the Goethe-Institut at 30 Irving Place on Thursday, June 9 at 7:00 p.m., reservations required. For more information about these prizes and their recipients, visit the website of the Goethe-Institut.
Congratulations to both prizewinning translators!