ROSSICA YOUNG TRANSLATORS AWARD 2010
WINNER
Leo Shtutin for his translation of an extract from Mikhail Shishkin's novel Letter-Book (Письмовник)
The winner of the RYTA was announced on 21 April by judges Oliver Ready and Robert Chandler at a special ceremony in the PEN Literary Café at the London Book Fair. Amanda Love-Darragh unfortunately could not attend the prize ceremony as she was unexpectedly stranded in Cairo due to the volcanic ash cloud.
Leo Shtutin receives £500 and an invitation from Academia Rossica to travel to Moscow to take part in a Translators' Congress in September 2010. The Congress will be a high-profile event which will take place during the International Moscow Book Fair and in which more 100 translators of Russian literature will take part.
RYTA shortlist
The shortlisted entries, in alphabetical order, are:
Peter Blackstock (Shishkin’s Письмовник)
Ana Reid (Shishkin’s Письмовник)
Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, (Yuzefovich's Журавли и карлики)
Max Seddon, (Yuzefovich's Журавли и карлики)
The three members of the jury pointed out that all submitted translations reflected a high level of ingenuity and talent. They also stressed that an outstanding literary translation requires not only talent, but also a high level of mental discipline and consistency. All translations had very good passages but only a few maintained the high quality throughout the whole text.
In regards to the best submission the jury came to unanimous decision, underlining that the winning translation not only got extremely close to the original in feel and understanding, but that it also managed to transform the Russian text into very idiomatic English.
Congratulations to the shortlisted translators and the winner!After the prize ceremony, the rest of the day was dedicated to translation of Russian literature into English, which also included the launch of the Rossica Translation Forum. We are inviting all those who are interested in literary translation to join us in this project.
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