Join us as we count down to the ALTA44: Inflection Points awards ceremony with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose longlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s prose judges are Jennifer Croft, Anton Hur, and Annie Janusch. This year’s judges for poetry are Sinan Antoon, Layla Benitez-James, and Sibelan Forrester.

The winning translators will receive a $2,500 cash prize each. The awards will be announced at ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA44: Inflection Points, which this year is being held jointly online and in-person in Tucson, AZ. The virtual awards ceremony will be aired on Saturday, October 16, at 5:00pm PT. To attend, register via the virtual conference platform (there is also a free ticket option that includes public events like this one.)

Join us as we shine the spotlight today on this NTA longlisted title, along with a citation penned by the judges:

Impostures
By al-Ḥarīrī
Translated from Arabic by Michael Cooperson
(Library of Arabic Literature/NYU Press)

This seminal work by al-Ḥarīrī has always been called untranslatable for its puns, palindromes, and incessant leaps in register, from poem to sermon to tale. Michael Cooperson’s efforts to bring all of these elements into English are staggering, the resulting work truly a wonder to behold. It is so rare for a translation to deploy so much creativity and inspiration, such wide-ranging research, and such rich intermingling of English-language texts, that reading Impostures is an absolute joy. It expands the possibilities of literary translation and acts as a definitive reminder that no work is untranslatable—that every work must just await its time and translator, as has happened here.