Svetlana Alexievich has a Nobel prize, and deserves it. But while she doesn’t need any recognition from me, I’ve just given the team behind her book a prize: the £2,000 Translators Association first translation award. Why? Well, I thought Second-Hand Time was stunning. But my Russian is terrible, so I only read it in 2016, when it was published in English, through the work of translator Bela Shayevich and Fitzcarraldo editor Jacques Testard. Nobody is likely ever to give the literature Nobel to a translator or editor – so my prize has gone to them.
In 2017, working with the Society of Authors and with support from the British Council, I established the TA first translation prize, using my €25,000 (£22,000) winnings from another award, the International Dublin literary award. Its aim was to highlight the work of translators new to the profession, and of the editors who work with them.
Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular English-speaking world, there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk. But there are many benefits to widening our pool of working translators, not least because new translators often lead us to meet new writers. More than half of the books submitted for the TA first translation prize are debuts for their translators as well as English-language debuts for their authors, showing that translators are in the vanguard of literary change. I’m told that one of our shortlisted books, The Sad Part Was by Prabda Yoon, was – if you can believe this – the first book of modern Thai fiction ever published in the UK.
Quick GuideThe 2018 TA first translation prize shortlist
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Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi
A novel, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman, and edited by Cécile Menon and Angeline Rothermundt at Les Fugitives.
Notes on a Thesis by Tiphaine Rivière
A graphic novel, translated from the French by Francesca Barrie, and edited by Clare Bullock at Jonathan Cape.
Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
An oral history, translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich and edited by Jacques Testard at Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg
A novel, translated from the Polish by Eliza Marciniak, and edited by Max Porter and Ka Bradley at Portobello Books.
The Sad Part Was by Prabda Yoon
A short story collection, translated from the Thai by Mui Poopoksakul, and edited by Deborah Smith at Tilted Axis Press.
The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz
A novel, translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette, and edited by Sal Robinson, Taylor Sperry and Željka Marošević at Melville House.
On the topic of breaking boundaries, our six-book shortlist included five books by women – an amazing rebalancing of a sector that usually publishes two translated books by men for every one by a woman (the new Warwick prize for women in translation is also seeking to counter this). Again, my suspicion is that the writers now being introduced to us in English are a much more diverse and better balanced group than we’ve seen before. A look at Man Booker International prize submissions for the last couple of years bears this out: roughly two books by men for every one by a woman, yes, but if you look only at the ones that are English-language debuts, they’re more or less at par.
Alongside those Thai short stories, our shortlist included novels from Mauritius, Egypt and Poland, a hilarious graphic novel from France, and our eventual Belarusian non-fiction winner. The editors who joined their translators on our shortlist took risks: they fought to acquire books that might not be obviously commercial (and which, in some cases, they couldn’t yet read themselves); they sought out talented newcomers to translate them, and they sharpened them up into the first-rate books my fellow judges and I were privileged to read in English. We translators complain we are largely invisible in the book world, but editors are as vital and even less visible – so having the translators share their prize money with their midwives seemed the least we could do by way of thanks.
There are many prizes in the book world, perhaps too many. But some exist not merely to reward one individual per year, but also to make a statement about what should be valued, and what we need more of. The TA first translation prize is a statement about pluralism and risk-taking, about investing in new talent and editorial commitment. Anybody who has read our superb shortlist or our deserving winner will, I hope, know at once why such things matter today.