The Society of Authors has announced the 41 shortlisted works vying for the eight prizes that will be awarded at the 2024 Translation Prizes ceremony, held at the British Library’s Knowledge Centre on 12th February 2025.

Awarded annually, biennially or every three years, their Translation Prizes recognize outstanding translations from works in Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish.

The SoA Translation Prizes evening is hosted every year with over £10,000 presented to winning and commended translators.

A prize fund of over £30,000 will be shared among the winners, celebrating translations of prose, poetry and non-fiction. Translations from 12 languages will be celebrated, including first translations from Eastern Armenian, Kazakh and Uyghur.

A winning translation from Dutch into English will be awarded the Vondel Translation Prize this year, a triennial prize last awarded in 2022. The judges described the five shortlisted translations – each with "an unforgettable first-person narrator" – as demonstrating "unflinching integrity, and above all, flair".

The biennial John Florio Prize has returned after a year out, celebrating translations from Italian. The winner will be awarded £3,000 and a runner-up will be given a prize of £1,000.

Brian Robert Moore is in the running for a translation of A Silence Shared by Lalla Romano, while Jenny McPhee is competing for the prize with a translation of Lies and Sorcery by Elsa Morante. Leah Janeczko is shortlisted for a translation of Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo and John Cullen and Gregory Conti are on the list for their translation of The Colour Line by Igiaba Scego.

Meanwhile, the winner of the Premio Valle Inclán prize for translations from Spanish into English, will also be awarded £3,000, while a runner-up will be awarded £1,000. Kit Maude is shortlisted for a translation of Cousins by Aurora Venturini, while Clayton Lehmann and Ángela Helmer are on the list for Francisco López de Gómara’s General History of the Indies. Christina MacSweeney is shortlisted for a translation of Fury by Clyo Mendoza, while Chris Andrews, Edith Grossman and Alastair Reid are in the running for Maqroll’s Prayer and Other Poems by Álvaro Mutis, and Chris Andrews has been shortlisted for You Glow in the Dark by Liliana Colanzi.

The other six translation prize shortlists in full:

Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for published translations from Arabic

Kay Heikkinen for a translation of Before the Queen Falls Asleep by Huzama Habayeb

Sawad Hussain for a translation of Edo’s Souls by Stella Gaitano

Nada Faris for a translation of Lost in Mecca by Bothayna Al-Essa 

Katharine Halls for a translation of Rotten Evidence by Ahmed Naji 

Robin Moger for a translation of Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal 

Nadiyah Abdullatif and Anam Zafar for a translation of Yoghurt and Jam or How my Mother Became Lebanese by Lena Merhej 

Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation Translation Prize for full-length Japanese-language works

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda and Allison Markin Powell for a translation of Kappa by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 

Brian Bergstrom for a translation of Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth by Kōhei Saitō 

David Boyd for a translation of The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada 

Masaya Saito for a translation of The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs by Sanki Saitō 

Alison Watts for a translation of What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama 

Kendall Heitzman for a translation of Nails and Eyes by Kaori Fujino 

Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translations into English of full-length German works

Michael Hofmann for a translation of Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by Werner Herzog

Imogen Taylor for a translation of Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann 

Michael Hofmann for a translation of Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck 

Gillian Davidson for a translation of Library for the War-Wounded by Monika Helfer 

Andrew Shanks for a translation of Revelation Freshly Erupting: Collected Poetry by Nelly Sachs 

Scott Moncrieff Prize for translations into English of full-length French works

Natasha Lehrer for a translation of As Rich as the King by Abigail Assor 

Mark Polizzotti for a translation of Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga 

Penny Hueston for a translation of Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq 

Joyce Zonana for a translation of The Child and the River by Henri Bosco 

Patrick McGuinness and Stephen Romer for a translation of The Day’s Ration: Selected Poems by Gilles Ortlieb 

TA First Translation Prize for a debut literary translation into English

Deanna Cachoian-Schanz and editor Tatiana Ryckman for a translation from Eastern Armenian of A Book, Untitled by Shushan Avagyan 

Dias Novita Wuri and editor Marika Webb-Pullman for a translation from Indonesian of Birth Canal by Dias Novita Wuri 

James Young and editor Stella Sabin for a translation from Portuguese of The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer 

Mirgul Kali and editor Deborah Smith for a translation from Kazakh of To Hell with Poets by Baqytgul Sarmekova 

Joshua L Freeman and editors Bea Hemming and Jenny Dean for a translation from Uyghur of Waiting to be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil 

Vondel Translation Prize for a translation into English of a full-length Dutch work

David McKay for a translation of We Slaves of Suriname by Anton de Kom 

Emma Rault for a translation of We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets 

Kristen Gehrman for a translation of The History of My Sexuality by Tobi Lakmaker 

Michele Hutchison for a translation of My Heavenly Favourite by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld 

Sam Garrett for a translation of Falling is like Flying by Manon Uphoff 

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