US arts agency awards US$325,000 in translation grants
US federal arts-funding agency National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced the 25 recipients of its Literature Translation Fellowships worth US$325,000 (A$451,000) in total.
The fellowships enable American and Canadian translators to translate work from 17 countries into English, including works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and ‘works that cross genres’. Thirteen of the fellowships were awarded to works by women.
Twenty-four recipients received US$12,500 (A$17,300) each for their projects, and translator Jennifer Feeley received US$25,000 ($A34,700) to translate the semi-autobiographical Chinese-language novel Mourning a Breast by Hong Kong writer Xi Xi, which was inspired by the writer’s diagnosis of breast cancer in 1989.
Among the other works being translated are the Macedonian biographical novel Grandma No-Yes (Lidija Dimkovska), which is written in the form of a diary exchange between a grandmother and granddaughter (to be translated by Christina E Kramer) and Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral’s poetry collection Tala, which is Mistral’s last published work before receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945 (to be translated by Anna Deeny Morales).
The fellowship projects were chosen from a pool of 104 applicants, with projects judged on the translators’ skill, as well as the importance of a particular book to English-speaking audiences, including those authors and languages that are often underrepresented.
To see the full list of fellowship recipients and their translation projects, click here.
Tags: translation
Category: International news
