Tuesday 30 September 2008

Schlegel-Tieck Prize

As the Literary Saloon notes, the British Translators' Association awarded its annual prizes last night at the South Bank. Unlike the Saloonists, I'm on the mailing list but London is a bit far away for me too. The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from German went to Ian Fairley for his translation of Snow Part by Paul Celan.

The Saloonists complain that nobody's announced yet (or not online) who won the awards. As much as I admire their own hard work and dedication - their blog on world literature is updated daily before I switch on my computer, even though they're in the US and so presumably do it in the middle of the night - they do have to realise that not everyone is quite as efficient. The Translators' Association has one part-time employee, and the rest is done on a voluntary basis by hard-working literary translators. And on the grand scale of things, it's not as if millions of people have been waiting for the announcement with baited breath, is it?

Note also the Guardian article, with a brief joyous comment from Ian Fairley.