The Modern Language Association Convention, held this past long-weekend in New York, included the presentation of the MLA’s three translation prizes. Although the convention is now held in January, it used to be held in December, which is why this year’s prizes are dated 2017 (awarded for works published in 2016) rather than 2018. Each of these three now annual (formerly biennial) prizes comes with a cash award.
The Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work went to Jeffrey Angles for his translation of The Book of the Dead by Orikuchi Shinobu (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2016), with honorable mentions to Margaret Jull Costa for her translation of On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes (New Directions, 2016) and Sam Taylor for his translation of The Heart, by Maylis de Kerangal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).
The Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature went to Alexandra Berlina for her translation of Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader (Bloomsbury, 2016) with an honorable mention to Lahcen Elyazghi Ezzaher for Three Arabic Treatises on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: The Commentaries of al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 2015).
The Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work went to Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson for their translation of Graveyard Clay / Cré na Cille: A Narrative in Ten Interludes by Máirtín Ó Cadhain (Yale Univ. Press, 2016), with honorable mentions to Esther Allen for Zama by Antonio Di Benedetto (New York Review Books, 2016) and Amy B. Reid for Mount Pleasant by Patrice Nganang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).
Congratulations to all the translators honored with these awards!
For lists of past winners of these awards, visit the MLA website.
The competition for the MLA’s 2018 translation awards, to be presented in January 2019, is now open for books published during 2017 (deadline for submissions: April 1, 2018).