Sunday Submissions: ‘World’s Best-endowed Literary Translation Award’

The Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding is open for submissions through August 31, 2018:

There are seven language pairs in play, with each winner earning $100,000 or $200,000. This year’s top awards are set to go to translators who work between Arabic and English and Arabic and German, with the $100K “achievement” awards for:

  • Translation from Arabic into Bosnian
  • Translation from Bosnian  into Arabic
  • Translation from Arabic into Italian
  • Translation from Italian into Arabic
  • Translation from Arabic into Japanese
  • Translation from Japanese into Arabic
  • Translation from Arabic into Russian
  • Translation from Russian into Arabic
  • Translation from Arabic into Swahili
  • Translation from Swahili into Arabic

Last year, the “achievement” languages were Chinese, Japanese, Malay, Persian, and Urdu.

Submissions can be made both by individuals or institutions, and nominated translations “must have been published in the five years prior to the announcement date of the Award.”

More about nominating a work is at the HTA website. The prize is in its fourth cycle. Previous winners include Michael Cooperson, May A. Mahmoud, Frédéric Lagrange, Salvador Peña Martín, Paul Starkey, Jamal Shehayyed, Katharine Halls, and Adam Talib, Geert Jan van Gelder, Gregor Schoeler, Issa Boullata, Ferial Ghazoul, John Verlenden, and Banipal.