September 1, 2023—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced today the longlists for the 2023 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose. 2023 marks the 25th year for the NTA, and the 9th year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose. The shortlists for the NTA will be announced on October 11th, and the winners will be announced on November 11th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA46: The Place of Translation. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each.
“ALTA is committed to rewarding excellence in literary translation, and each year, the National Translation Awards recognize some of the very best books published, period,” said ALTA’s Vice President Chenxin Jiang. “The Awards are now in their 25th year. We’re excited that this year’s longlists represent 19 languages and 19 presses, with works by translators with a wide range of experience.”
This year the NTA judges received record-breaking submissions, with 262 titles submitted to the National Translation Award in Prose, and 93 submitted to the National Translation Award in Poetry. The 2023 NTA longlists feature authors writing in 19 different languages and books from 19 different presses, celebrating the diversity of literature in translation in English and the large, vibrant community of translators, publishers and readers. The award selection criteria include a vis-a-vis evaluation of the quality of the original language book and the quality of the English language translation. This year’s prose judges are Natascha Bruce, Shelley Frisch, Jason Grunebaum, Sawad Hussain, and Lytton Smith. This year’s judges for poetry are Pauline Fan, Heather Green, and Shook.
This year’s Awards Ceremony will take place fully in-person on Saturday, November 11th as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA46: The Place of Translation. The Awards Ceremony will feature this year’s prize judges announcing the winners, and short readings from the winning translators. The conference will be held November 8-11 in Tucson, AZ and is the first fully in-person conference hosted by ALTA since 2019.
About the National Translation Awards: The NTA is awarded annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. The NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.
The 2023 National Translation Award in Prose Longlist (in alphabetical order by title):
1,000 Coils of Fear
By Olivia Wenzel
Translated from German by Priscilla Layne
Catapult
The Antarctica of Love
By Sara Stridsberg
Translated from Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Artisans: A Vanishing Chinese Village
By Shen Fuyu
Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang
Astra House
Chinatown
By Thuận
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý
New Directions | Tilted Axis Press
Concerning My Daughter
By Kim Hye-jin
Translated from Korean by Jamie Chang
Restless Books
Happy Stories, Mostly
By Norman Erikson Pasaribu
Translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao
Giramondo Publishing | Tilted Axis Press | The Feminist Press
I’d Like to Say Sorry, But There’s No One to Say Sorry To
By Mikołaj Grynberg
Translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye
The New Press
Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas
By Shahidul Zahir
Translated from Bangla by V. Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahrin
HarperCollins India
So Distant from My Life
By Monique Ilboudo
Translated from French by Yarri Kamara
Tilted Axis Press
Spadework for a Palace
By László Krasznahorkai
Translated from Hungarian by John Batki
New Directions
Stories of the True
By Jeyamohan
Translated from Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar
Juggernaut
Valli: A Novel
By Sheela Tomy
Translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil
HarperCollins India
Read the judge’s citations for each of the titles here.
The 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry Longlist (in alphabetical order by title):
Cicada
By Phoebe Giannisi
Translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden
New Directions
claus and the scorpion
By Lara Dopazo Ruibal
Translated from Galician by Laura Cesarco Eglin
co•im•press
Flight and Metamorphosis
By Nelly Sachs
Translated from German by Joshua Weiner with Linda B. Parshall
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century from the Migrants and Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
By 37 Tang poets
Translated from Chinese by Wong May
The Song Cave | Carcanet
Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season
By Forough Farrokhzad
Translated from Persian by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
New Directions
Names and Rivers
By Shuri Kido
Translated from Japanese by Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander
Copper Canyon Press
The Rust of History
By Sotero Rivera Avilés
Translated from Spanish by Raquel Salas Rivera
Circumference Books
The Threshold
By Iman Mersal
Translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tideline
By Krystyna Dąbrowska
Translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Mira Rosenthal
Zephyr Press
Underfoot
By Niillas Holmberg
Translated from Northern Sámi by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs & Johanna Domokos
White Pine Press
The Water People
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Poetry Translation Centre
When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me
By Ananda Devi
Translated from French by Kazim Ali
Phoneme / Deep Vellum | HarperCollins India
Read the judge’s citations for each of the titles here.