2010
The inaugural Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize, launched in 2010, focused on the Spanish language.
The winner was Beth Fowler, and you can read her translation of ‘El hachazo’ by Matías Néspolo here. It appeared on the Granta website, where you can also read a Q&A with Beth. Check it out at http://www.granta.com/Harvill-Secker-Young-Translators-Prize. You can also read a blog about Beth’s experiences here.
The runners-up were Emily Dyson, Lindsey Ford and Michael McDevitt.
From left to right: Emily, Beth, Lindsey and Michael
Matías Néspolo was born in Buenos Aires in 1975, but grew up in a small village of the same province ‘whose name I don’t want to remember’. He studied literature in Argentina and went on to write for a variety of magazines, publishing a collection of poems, Antología seca de Green Hills (Dry Anthology of Green Hills), in 2005 and a few short stories here and there. He has recently published an anthology of new Argentine writers with his sister Jimena with the Argentine publisher Adriana Hidalgo. Making his living as well as he can as a cultural journalist for the newspaper El Mundo, Matías Néspolo has been living in Barcelona since 2001. His first novel, Seven Ways to Kill a Cat, appeared in Spain in 2009, and will be published in English by Harvill Secker in 2011.
The judges were:
Margaret Jull Costa (translator)
Margaret Jull Costa has been a literary translator for over twenty years and has translated many Portuguese, Spanish and Latin American writers, including Javier Marías, Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago. In 2008 she won both the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the PEN/ Book-of-the-Month Translation Prize for her version of Eça de Queíroz’s masterpiece The Maias. She was awarded the 2009 Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Bernardo Atxaga’s The Accordionist’s Son.
Nicholas Shakespeare was born in 1957. The son of a diplomat, much of his youth was spent in the Far East and South America. His novels have been translated into twenty languages. They include The Vision of Elena Silves, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, Snowleg, The Dancer Upstairs, which was chosen by the American Libraries Association in 1997 as the year’s best novel, and in 2001 was made into a film of the same name by John Malkovich, and Secrets of the Sea. His novel Inheritance was published by Harvill Secker this July.
Briony Everroad (Prize founder and Harvill Secker editor)
Comments on the announcement of the prize:
Beth Fowler said, 'I'm thrilled to have won the inaugural Young Translators' Prize, as it's a great opportunity for aspiring literary translators. I had always hoped to pursue a career in literary translation, so this prize is an excellent place to start.'
Prize founder and judge, Briony Everroad, commented, ‘We were delighted to receive a total of 231 entries, which is a testament to the vivacity of the literary translation scene. Beth’s translation really stood out because of her inventive linguistic choices and her vividness of expression, and she shows great promise as a literary translator. Harvill Secker is very pleased to be involved in encouraging the next generation of translators.’