October 11, 2023—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced today the shortlists 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. This year’s judges for prose 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.
“The first National Translation Award was conferred 25 years ago at the ALTA conference held in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1998, and in the quarter century since then, 38 literary translators have been honored for their translations from 18 different languages,” said ALTA’s current President, Ellen Elias-Bursać. “Since 2015, two NTAs have been awarded each year—one for prose and one for poetry. Since the award first began, more than 100 jury members have given their time to this extraordinary project. Every winter and spring they spend five months poring over the previous year’s production, and over the summer they turn to expert readers for a language-based assessment of each longlisted work. The result is the shortlist you see before you today, to be followed by the award ceremony, the high point of the autumn ALTA conference, when the literary translation community celebrates the year’s winners. So hat’s off to this year’s longlist, shortlist and winners, and to the many remarkable translations the NTAs will spotlight over the decades to come.”
This year’s Awards Ceremony, where this year’s winners will be announced, will take place on Saturday, November 11 as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA46: The Place of Translation. The conference will be held November 8-11 in Tucson, AZ and is the first fully in-person conference hosted by ALTA since 2019.
The Awards Ceremony will feature this year’s prize judges announcing the winners, and short readings from the winning translators. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each.
The longlists, comprising 24 titles total, were announced on September 1, 2023 and can be found here.
The 2023 National Translation Award in Prose Shortlist (in alphabetical order by title):
Chinatown
By Thuân
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý
New Directions/Tilted Axis
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
So Distant From My Life
By Monique Ilboudo
Translated from French by Yarri Kamara
Tilted Axis
Spadework for a Palace
By László Krasznahorkai
Translated from Hungarian by John Batki
New Directions
Stories of the True
By B. 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 Shortlist (in alphabetical order by title):
Cicada
by Phoebe Giannisi
Translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden
New Directions
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 & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
By 37 Tang poets
Translated from Chinese by Wong May
The Song Cave | Carcanet
The Threshold
By Iman Mersal
Translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Water People
By Venus Khoury-Ghata
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
The Poetry Translation Centre
When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me
By Ananda Devi
Translated from French by Kazim Ali
Deep Vellum/Phoneme | HarperCollins India
Read the judge’s citations for each of the titles here.
About the American Literary Translators Association
The American Literary Translators Association is a nonprofit arts membership association that provides resources, community, and professional affiliation to its members: individual translators, academic institutions, presses, and others working in literary translation. The annual ALTA conference, held in a different location each year, is the largest gathering of literary translators in the United States, and the only one of its kind. It brings together nearly 500 translators, writers, and editors for an intimate, intense, three-day conversation through panels, workshops, roundtables, and on- and off-site bilingual readings. The ALTA conference is structured around the creation of high-quality art. ALTA administers awards to recognize excellence in translation, and provides fellowships and mentorships to support emerging translators.