ACFNY TRANSLATION PRIZE 2020
The $4,000 Prize will be awarded for an outstanding translation of contemporary Austrian literature (prose) into English.
Selected texts from a living Austrian author have to be published in the original German after 1989. Poetry or drama texts will not be considered. No published translation of the selected text into English must exist. There must not be any contractual relation between the translator and a publisher regarding the submitted text. The published original text must not exceed 100,000 words. To be considered an Austrian author either Austrian citizenship or permanent residence in Austria for the past 3 years is required.
The successful candidate will be informed by the end of November 2020 after which date they will be invited to work on a full translation which is expected to be finished by mid-2021. The $4,000 USD ACFNY Translation Prize will constitute full payment for a translation of a book whose original text is up to 50,000 words. Books longer than 50,000 words will receive an additional support from the publisher as follows: titles up to 70,000 words will receive another $1,500 in payment, and those between 70,000 and 100,000 words will receive up to another $3,000. The complete translation of the winning text is scheduled to be published by New Vessel Press in 2022.
The jury will consider the style, rhythm, and readability of the translation as well as the impact of the original and translated text and its potential relevance and attractiveness for Anglo-Saxon readers.
Applications should include a cover letter, bio, records illustrating the translator´s previous work as well as a sample translation (10 pages/ approx. 4,000 words) and the text of the German-language original. They should be submitted to new-york-kf@bmeia.gv.at by 31 October 2020. Late submissions will not be considered.
There is no limitation as to the translator’s country of origin/nationality.
PLEASE SEND THE DOCUMENTS IN 4 SEPARATE ATTACHMENTS (1- COVER, 2- BIO & WORK EXPERIENCE, 3 – TRANSLATION, 4- ORIGINAL TEXT) AND DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME ON THE TRANSLATION AND ORIGINAL TEXT.
+++
ABOUT THE JURY
An independent jury will select a winner from among qualified applications. The 2020 ACFNY Translation Prize Jury members are publisher Michael Z. Wise (New York City), literary critic Michael Orthofer (New York City), journalist Juliane Fischer (Vienna), and Professor of German Studies Gundolf Graml (Agnes Scott College; Decatur; Georgia).
Juliane Fischer works as a freelance journalist in Austria. She writes for the arts section in the daily paper Salzburger Nachrichten, book reviews in the weekly paper Falter and for the pop culture magazin The Gap among others. Fischer studied Comparative Literature as well as Austrian Studies in Vienna, Salzburg and Umeå (Sweden).
Gundolf Graml is Professor of German Studies and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Strategic Initiatives at Agnes Scott College. Graml teaches courses on German and Austrian literature, cinema, and cultural history, and culture. He has published widely on the role of tourism in German and Austrian national identity formation. Graml won the 2013 Max Kade Prize for best article in the Journal for Austrian Studies and his peer-reviewed research has also been published in journals such as Colloquia Germanica, Monatshefte, Women in German Yearbook, Tourism Studies, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte, among others. His most recent publications include the monograph Austria Revisited: Tourism, Space and National Identity from 1945 to the Present, published with Berghahn Press in 2020 and the translation of excerpts from Reinhold Messner’s memoir Am Abgrund, published in 2020 in the anthology Mountains and the German Mind: Translations from Gessner to Messner, 1541-2009, edited by Sean Ireton and Caroline Schaumann.
Michael Orthofer is the founder of the Complete Review (www.complete-review.com) and its Literary Saloon blog, where he has been reviewing books and expounding on the international literary scene since 1999. His most recent book is The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2016).
Michael Z. Wise is the publisher of New Vessel Press. He has worked as a foreign correspondent based in London and Vienna, having covered Austria and Czechoslovakia for Reuters and The Washington Post. He is the author of Capital Dilemma: Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy and reads and speaks German and French. New Vessel Press is an independent publishing house devoted to translated literature and narrative nonfiction from around the world. It published the 2019 National Translation Award winning novel What’s Left of the Night by Ersi Sotiropoulos and translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich.