October 10, 2024—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced today the shortlists for the 2024 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose. 2024 marks the 26th year for the NTA, and the 10th year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose. The winners will be announced on October 26th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, in Milwaukee, WI. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each. The longlists, comprising 24 titles total, were announced on September 5, 2024 and can be found here.
“Our judges had the very difficult task of narrowing down this year’s submissions to these two shortlists of impressive translations, ranging from the intimate to the epic in scale,” said Corine Tachtiris, ALTA’s Vice President. “In a year where AI is dominating the headlines, these translations all attest that AI will never be able to replace the artistry, nuance, and risk that characterizes the work of human translators.”
This year’s prose judges are Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi. This year’s judges for poetry are Kazim Ali, Ronnie Apter, and Mary Jo Bang. This year’s Awards Ceremony will take place in-person on Saturday, October 26th as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation. The Awards Ceremony will feature this year’s prize judges announcing the winners, and short readings from the winning translators. The conference will be held October 25th-28th in Milwaukee, WI.
About the National Translation Awards: The NTA is awarded annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. The NTA is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.
The 2024 National Translation Award in Prose Shortlist (in alphabetical order by title):
The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild
By Mathias Énard
Translated from French by Frank Wynne
New Directions | Fitzcarraldo Editions
Cold Nights of Childhood
By Tezer Özlü
Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely
Transit Books
The End of August
By Yu Miri
Translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles
Riverhead Books | Tilted Axis Press
The Hunger of Women
By Marosia Castaldi
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
And Other Stories
Not Even the Dead
By Juan Gómez Bárcena
Translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore
Open Letter Books
Whale
By Cheon Myeong-kwan
Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
Archipelago Books | Europa Editions UK
Find out about what the judges had to say about the shortlisted titles here.
The 2024 National Translation Award in Poetry Shortlist (in alphabetical order by title):
And the Street
By Pierre Alferi
Translated from French by Cole Swensen
Green Linden Press
Central American Book of the Dead
By Balam Rodrigo
Translated from Spanish by Dan Bellm
FlowerSong Press
A Friend’s Kitchen
By Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Translated from Arabic by Bryar Bajalan with the poet Shook
The Poetry Translation Centre
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
By Ovid
Translated from Latin by C. Luke Soucy
University of California Press
Shining Sheep
By Ulrike Almut Sandig
Translated from German by Karen Leeder
Seagull Books
Winter King
By Ostap Slyvynsky
Translated from Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova
Lost Horse Press
Find out about what the judges had to say about the shortlisted titles here.