Polish Literature Translated and Nominated for the National Translation Award
Translations of Wiesław Myśliwski’s Treatise on Shelling Beans and Agnieszka Kuciak’s Distant Lands are contenders for this year’s National Translation Award. The winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize.
Wiesław Myśliwski’s book was translated by Bill Johnston, a renowned translator of Polish literature into English, professor of comparative literature at the Indiana University, and this year’s winner of the Transatlantyk Prize. His renditions of Myśliwski’s novels (Stone Upon Stone and Treatise on Shelling Beans) have been critically acclaimed and earned him several significant American translation prizes such as Best Translated Book Award 2012: Fiction, PEN Translation Prize and AATSEEL Translation Award.
At the moment Johnston is working on a translation of Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz.
Agnieszka Kuciak’s
Distant Lands: An anthology of Poets who Don’t Exist were translated by Karen Kovacik, a poet, translator and professor at Purdue University in Indianapolis. This year, she also received the Polish Book Institute Scholarship. Prose and poetry translations of works by Jacek Dehnel, Ewa Lipska etc. were published in literary magazines and anthologies. An anthology of Polish poets translated by Kovacik is due to be published next year by White Pine Press.
The National Translation Award is an annual prize given by the American Literary Translators Association since 1998 to the best translation published on the American market in the preceding year. The names of the five finalists will be revealed in October. The association will announce the winner’s name at a conference in November.
In 2011 the NTA prize was given to Danuta Borchardt for a translation of Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke.
See the full list of the nominees for the National Translation Award. Both books were published with support from ©Poland Translation Program.
source: the Book Institute, edited by mg, 18/08/2014
Translated by Kasia Dolato
[{"nid":"5688","uuid":"6aa9e079-0240-4dcb-9929-0d1cf55e03a5","type":"article","langcode":"en","field_event_date":"","title":"Challenges for Polish Prose in the Nineties","field_introduction":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary\r\n","field_summary":"Content: Depict the world, oneself and the form | The Mimetic Challenge: seeking the truth, destroying and creating myths | Seeking the Truth about the World | Destruction of the Heroic Emigrant Myth | Destruction of the Polish Patriot Myth | Destruction of the Flawless Democracy Myth | Creation of Myths | Biographical challenge | Challenges of genre | Summary","topics_data":"a:2:{i:0;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259609\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:26:\u0022#language \u0026amp; literature\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:27:\u0022\/topics\/language-literature\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}i:1;a:3:{s:3:\u0022tid\u0022;s:5:\u002259644\u0022;s:4:\u0022name\u0022;s:8:\u0022#culture\u0022;s:4:\u0022path\u0022;a:2:{s:5:\u0022alias\u0022;s:14:\u0022\/topic\/culture\u0022;s:8:\u0022langcode\u0022;s:2:\u0022en\u0022;}}}","field_cover_display":"default","image_title":"","image_alt":"","image_360_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/360_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ZsoNNVXJ","image_260_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/260_auto_cover\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=pLlgriOu","image_560_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/560_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=0n3ZgoL3","image_860_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/860_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=ELffe8-z","image_1160_auto":"\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1160_auto\/public\/2018-04\/jozef_mroszczak_forum.jpg?itok=XazO3DM5","field_video_media":"","field_media_video_file":"","field_media_video_embed":"","field_gallery_pictures":"","field_duration":"","cover_height":"991","cover_width":"1000","cover_ratio_percent":"99.1","path":"en\/node\/5688","path_node":"\/en\/node\/5688"}]