London honours literature’s invisible greats

Literature’s invisible figures were honoured in London on January 31 in an event to celebrate literary translation.

The British Centre for Literary Translation and The Society of Authors organised the Translation Prizes 2010, funded by various cultural institutions. The translators came out of their hidden chambers and read from their winning works. Some made it into accomplished performances of spoken word.

List of winners in order of appearance on stage:

The John Florio Prize for translation from Italian (£3,000 / 3,500 euros)
Jamie McKendrick for The Embrace: Selected Poems by Valerio Magrelli

The Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for translation from Arabic (£3,000 / 3,500 euros)
Humphrey Davies for Yalo by Elias Khoury

The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from German (£3,000 / 3,500 euros)
Breon Mitchell for The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

The Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation from French (£2,000 / 2,300 euros)
Susan Wicks for Cold Spring in Winter by Valérie Rouzeau

The Premio Valle Inclán for translation from Spanish (£2,000 / 2,300 euros)
Margaret Jull Costa for Your Face Tomorrow – 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell by Javier Marias

Christopher Johnson for Selected Poetry of Francisco de Quevedo

The TLS-Risa Domb Porjes Prize for translation from Hebrew (£2,000 / 2,300 euros)
Peter Cole for The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492

Ali Sheikholeslami
euronews correspondent in London
ali.sheikholeslami@euronews.net

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