So it turns out I’ve been misnumbering the Modern Language Association’s translation prizes for years now (unless they have).
But rather than retroactively renumbering every announcement to date, I’ll leave earlier posts alone and start with this year counting the years the crazy way the MLA does, which is as follows: the 2018 prizes are for books published in 2018; they are announced in 2019 (i.e. now) and awarded in 2020. Go figure. So last year’s awards, which I announced as the “2018” awards, are actually 2017 by the MLA’s reckoning. If you have any questions about this, please consult the MLA.
Now onwards to the prize announcements! The following prizes have just been announced and will be presented at the MLA convention in January.
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work:
- Linda Coverdale, Brooklyn, New York, for Slave Old Man, by Patrick Chamoiseau (New Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Ellen Elias-Bursać, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and David Williams, Raglan, New Zealand, for Fox, by Dubravka Ugresic (Open Letter Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Michael Hofmann, University of Florida, Gainesville, for Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin (New York Review Books, 2018)
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature (for 2017/2018):
- Peimin Ni, Grand Valley State University, for Understanding the Analects of Confucius: A New Translation of Lunyu with Annotations (State Univ. of New York Press, 2017)
- Sylvia Adrian Notini, University of Bologna, for The Venetian Qur’an: A Renaissance Companion to Islam, by Pier Mattia Tommasino (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: John Marincola, Florida State University, for On Writing History: From Herodotus to Herodian (Penguin, 2017)
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies:
- Martina Piperno, KU Leuven, Belgium, for Rebuilding Post-revolutionary Italy: Leopardi and Vico’s New Science (Voltaire Foundation, 2018)
- Diego Pirillo, University of California, Berkeley, for The Refugee-Diplomat: Venice, England, and the Reformation (Cornell Univ. Press, 2018)
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures:
- Sabine Hake, University of Texas, Austin, for The Proletarian Dream: Socialism, Culture, and Emotion in Germany, 1863–1933 (De Gruyter, 2017)
- B. Venkat Mani, University of Wisconsin, Madison, for Recoding World Literature: Libraries, Print Culture, and Germany’s Pact with Books (Fordham Univ. Press, 2017)
- Honorable mention: Patrizia C. McBride, Cornell University, for The Chatter of the Visible: Montage and Narrative in Weimar Germany (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2016)
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures:
- Leonid Livak, University of Toronto, for In Search of Russian Modernism (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Eleonory Gilburd, University of Chicago, for To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture (Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Andrew Kahn, University of Oxford; Mark Lipovetsky, Columbia University; Irina Reyfman, Columbia University; and Stephanie Sandler, Harvard University, for A History of Russian Literature (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018)
Lois Roth Award for a Translation of a Literary Work:
- Damion Searls, Brooklyn, New York, for Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, by Uwe Johnson (New York Review Books, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Asselin Charles, Toronto, Canada, for Dézafi, by Frankétienne (Univ. of Virginia Press, 2018)
- Honorable mention: Donald Rayfield, emeritus, Queen Mary University of London, for volume 1 of Kolyma Stories, by Varlam Shalamov (New York Review Books, 2018)
Congratulations to all the translators whose work was selected to be honored!