ROSSICA YOUNG TRANSLATORS AWARD 2011
WINNER
Maya Vinokour of the University of Pennsylvania has won the Rossica Young Translators Prize 2011 for her translation of the extract from Anna Starobinets' novel 'Zhivushy'.
The result was announced at a special event at the London Book Fair in the Pen Literary Cafes by Rossica Young Translator judge and esteemed translator Andrew Bromfield. All three judges were particularly impressed by the professionalism of Maya's translation.
I'm a first-year PhD student in the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Russian and German literature. I was born in Moscow and have been in the States since the age of four. I graduated from the University of Chicago in 2008 and taught in Boston before moving to Philadelphia in 2010. I've always been an avid reader of Russian books, and have particularly enjoyed translation -- an activity at once rigorous (because you have to remain faithful to the original) and enormously creative (because there are a million ways to do so).
My choice of excerpt was motivated by my abiding interest in the theme of spectatorship, which I thought was quite pronounced in Anna Starobinets' novel. My B.A. thesis was about the ways in which spectatorship destroys the individual identities of the protagonists in Franz Kafka's novels. Zhivushchij imagines a dystopian future whose central feature -- the fully integrated yet strangely atomized population of the Living -- seemed to me stationed at the mathematical limit of the enormous, malevolent bureaucracies frequently found in Kafka's works.
This year there were 54 entries for the prize from all over the world! - 22 for Vodolazkin , 20 for Starobinets and 12 for Danilkin. The judges also selected shortlisted 4 other entries for the prize.
RYTA 2011 shortlist
The shortlisted entrants are:
Eugenia Sokolskaya – Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania – Gagarin
Lucy Morris – no affiliation – Solovyov and Larionov
Claire Hegarty – Christ Church College, Oxford – Solovyov and Larionov
Irina Sadovina – SSEES - Gagarin
Thank you to everybody who entered the Russian Young Translators Prize 2011.
The Rossica Young Translators Award was established in 2009 to support young people who are passionate about the world of translation and to encourage literary translation into English amongst those who study and speak Russian. With the help of this award we would like to nurture a new generation of Russian to English translators, as well as encourage cultural dialogue. What is more, this award casts a spotlight on the newest developments in Russian literature by selecting extracts for translation from the latest releases by acclaimed contemporary authors.
This year’s award was particularly exciting as it coincided with the Russian Market Focus at the London Book Fair. This is the biggest ever celebration of Russian literature in Britain and translators in this competition will be a part of it. In partnership with the British Council, Academia Rossica invited over 50 leading Russian writers to Britain. All the shortlisted translators were given the unique chance to meet these writers, as well as other translators, at a special event at the LBF. We were also very pleased to have such distinguished panel of judges for this year’s competition, Andrew Bromfield, Pamela Davidson and Katharine Hodgson.
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