November 11, 2023—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced the winners of the 2023 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA46: The Place of Translation. The Awards Ceremony featured this year’s prize judges announcing the winners, and short readings from the winning translators. The conference was held November 8th-11th in Tucson, AZ and was the first fully in-person conference hosted by ALTA since 2019. 2023 marks the 25th year for the NTA, and the 9th year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose. The winner received a plaque from presenting judge Jason Grunebaum, and a short reading followed by the translator from the winning text.
Winner: 2023 National Translation Award in Prose
Chinatown
By Thuận
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý
New Directions | Tilted Axis
This is what the judges had to say about the winner:
The premise of Chinatown promises claustrophobia: a Vietnamese woman trapped in the Paris metro by a suspect package, possibly a bomb. Thuận’s novel, though, brought to us by Nguyễn An Lý’s sweeping, melodic phrasing, is anything but sedentary: who knew reverie could be this fast-moving, this suspenseful? Below the surface, waiting, feeling the uneasy gaze of her fellow Parisians, our narrator travels back through her memories—of her son, of Hanoi, of his absent, longed-for father—and, in so doing, gifts us constraint’s solace: that memories might bring one back to a sense of self, against all the odds.
About the winner:
Nguyễn An Lý lives in Hochiminh City and translates mostly from English to Vietnamese. She has over 20 translations published under various names and in various genres, including authors such as Margaret Atwood, George Orwell, Kazuo Ishiguro, Borges, and the poetry in The Lord of the Rings. As an editor, she has worked with translations from Nabokov, A. S. Byatt, Barthes, Joseph Campbell, Viet Thanh Nguyen and Liu Cixin, among others. Chinatown by Thuận is her debut translation into English, shortly to be followed by another novel by the same author. She co-founds and co-edits the independent online Zzz Review.
[Image description: An Lý, a Vietnamese woman with short black hair and black eyes, is seen in 3/4 profile looking away from the viewer and raising her hand toward her mouth in a hesitant smile. She wears a simple dangling earring and black shirt in a night-time indoor setting with lights in the background.]
“ALTA is incredibly proud to recognize Nguyễn An Lý and Robyn Creswell for their masterful translations from Vietnamese and Arabic respectively, in this the 25th year of the National Translation Award,” said ALTA’s Executive Director Elisabeth Jaquette. “We are also pleased that, thanks to a generous gift from an ALTA member, the prize amounts have been increased to $4,000 each, starting this year. We celebrate these two winners, as well as all the translators, authors, and presses on this year’s shortlists and longlists, who expand the landscape of literature available in English. As readers, and as members of a global community, we are all richer for their skill and artistry.”
This year’s prose judges were Natascha Bruce, Shelley Frisch, Jason Grunebaum, Sawad Hussain, and Lytton Smith. The winning translators received a $4,000 cash prize each. The longlists, comprising 24 titles total, were announced on September 1, 2023, and the shortlists, comprising 12 titles total, were announced on October 11, 2023.
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, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), 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 submissions portal will be opened in January 2024.