This year’s Harvill-Secker Young Translators’ Prize, which will award £1,000 to the best translation of Mansoura Ezz Eldin’s short story, “Layl Qouti,” closed at the end of July.
Judge Briony Everroad, an editor at Harvill Secker, said that they received “about 92 entries in the end.” That’s down considerably from last year, when they received 230 for the Spanish-English translation of”‘El Hachazo” by Matías Néspolo.
But 92’s not bad, I suppose. It’s certainly enough to make for a good deal of reading for judges Tony Calderbank, Maya Jaggi, Penelope Lively, and Everroad.
The winner is set to be announced on September 28, and انشاء الله we’ll have an interview with the young winner here.
Next year, Harvill-Secker will switch to a different language. Perhaps ArabLit will take up the translation-contest challenge, although 1) we certainly wouldn’t restrict it to translators under 35 and 2) oh, we haven’t a spare 1,000 british pounds lying about.
I entered obviously not expecting to win at all it was an extremely tough piece so I’m interested to read the winning entry
Can’t wait, myself! Six weeks till the announcement.
Actually 92 is very high, considering the number of Arabic literary translators is certainly less than a fourth of the number of Spanish literary translators.
I would love to see all the entries. I would pay to see all the entries.
I would as well, I would also pay to see stats about who submitted an entry like the nationality breakdown of the translators and stuff like that I’m sure the Europeans outnumber the Americans….
It was a tough piece that’s for sure.
really tough!!!!! I’m glad I’m not the only one,