Translation is not a matter
of words only: it is a matter
of making intelligible a whole
culture.
Anthony Burgess
The Oxford Weidenfeld Prize is for book length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It was founded by Lord Weidenfeld and is supported by New College, The Queen's College, and St Anne's College, Oxford.
Recent winners include:
Celia Hawkesworth for Ivo Andrić’s Omer Pasha Latas (New York Review Books ); Lisa Dillman for Andrés Barba’s Such Small Hands (Portobello); Frank Perry for Lina Wolff's Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs (And Other Stories); Philip Roughton for Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man MacLehose Paul Vincent and John Irons for 100 Dutch Language Poems (Holland Park); Susan Bernofsky for Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days (Portobello); Susan Wicks for Valérie Rouzeau’s Talking Vrouz (Arc); Philip
Boehm for Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel (Portobello); Judith Landry for Diego Marani’s New Finnish Grammar (Dedalus); Margaret Jull Costa for Jose Saramago’s The Elephant’s Journey (Harvill Secker); Jamie McKendrick for Valerio Magrelli’s The Embrace (Faber and Faber); Anthea Bell for Sasa Stanisic’s How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
This year’s judges are
Patrick McGuinness, Marta Arnaldi , Karolina Watroba , and Simon Park (Chair).
The shortlist will be announced in May 2020. The prize of £2000 will be awarded at Oxford Translation Day at St Anne’s College on Saturday 13 June 2020. Oxford Translation Day will feature talks, seminars and workshops, and will give all shortlisted translators the opportunity to read from and discuss their work.
How To Enter
The closing date for entries is 31 January 2020.
To be eligible, a translation must be a work of fiction, poetry or drama written in any living European language by any author living or dead. It must be a book published for the first time in print form in the United Kingdom in the year 2019. Although the book’s first UK publication must fall in the year 2019, it is still eligible if it was previously published in English elsewhere. Only books published in the UK are eligible. To prove the book complies with this rule it needs to have a UK ISBN, have the price printed in Pounds Sterling and be distributed in the UK.
It may be the work of up to three translators.
Four copies of each translation must be submitted. It will not be possible to return them.
Entries should be accompanied by a statement of the date of publication and a contact address and telephone number.
The judges will consider the quality of the translation as well as the importance of the original work and the value of its being put into English.
Enquiries may be addressed to Dr Eleni Philippou at Comparative.Criticism@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Entries should be sent to:
THE OXFORD-WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE
Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation
St Anne’s College
Oxford OX2 6HS
www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk
FOr further information, click here.
St Anne’s College | New College | The Queen’s College
