The American Literary Translators Association, otherwise known as ALTA, yesterday announced the longlists for the 2017 National Translation Awards in both poetry and prose:
This year’s lists feature works from 11 different source languages, including two from Arabic: Amjad Nasser’s A Map of Signs and Scents, trans. Fady Joudah and Khaled Mattawa and Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, trans. Leri Price.
You can read an excerpt of No Knives at the Hoopoe website; Khalifa’s novel also made the eight-book shortlist for this year’s Prix de la Littérature Arabe. Six poems by Amjad Nasser can be found at PEN America.
The 2017 National Translation Award judges for poetry are Ani Gjika, Katrine Øgaard Jensen, and Gregory Racz, and the year’s prose judges are Carol Apollonio, Eric Becker, and Ottilie Mulzet. (If you do a double-take when looking at the list below, as I did, Ottilie Mulzet is a judge for the prose award but on the longlist for the poetry award.)
The 5-title shortlists are set to be announced in August, with the winners announced at ALTA’s annual conference in October. The winning translators will each receive a $2,500 cash prize.
The full longlists, as provided by ALTA, “listed alphabetically by title”:
A Map of Signs and Scents
by Amjad Nasser
translated by Fady Joudah & Khaled Mattawa
(Northwest University Press)
by Dulce Maria Loynaz
translated by James O’Connor
(Archipelago Books)
by Olvido García Valdés
translated by Catherine Hammond
(Cardboard House Press)
by Szilárd Borbély
translated by Ottilie Mulzet
(New York Review of Books)
by Pablo Neruda
translated by Mariela Giffor
(Tupelo Press)
by Xi Xi
translated by Jennifer Feeley
(New Mexico State University Press)
by Rafael Alberti
translated by Carolyn Tipton
(White Pine Press)
by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
translated by Katherine Hedeen
(co im press)
by Tseveendorjin Oidov
translated by Simon Wickhamsmith
(Phoneme Media)
by Nora Iuga
translated by Adam Sorkin and Diane Manole
(Bitter Oleander Press)
by Marcelo Morales
translated by Kristin Dykstra
(University of Alabama Press)
by Galo Ghigliotto
translated by Daniel Borzutsky
(Coim Press)
National Translation Award Longlist in Prose:
by Lucio Cardoso
translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson
(Open Letter Books)
by Zahia Rahmani
translated by Laura Vergnaud
(Yale University Press)
by John Ajvide Lindqvist
translated by Marlaine Delargy
(Text Publishing)
by Reiner Stach
translated by Shelley Frisch
(Princeton University Press)
by Khaled Khalifa
translated by Leri Price
(American University of Cairo Press)
by Orikuchi Shinobu
translated by Jeffrey Angles
(University of New Mexico Press)
by Yan Lianke
translated by Carlos Rojas
(Grove Atlantic)
by László Krasznahorkai
translated by George Szirtes and John Batki
(New Directions)
by Catherine Leroux
translated by Lazer Lederhendler
(Biblioasis)
by Pedro Cabiya
translated by Jessica Powell
(Mandel Vilar Press)
by Antonio de Benedetto
translated by Esther Allen
(New York Review of Books)