Hermann Hesse Prize to Susan Bernofsky

Congratulations to Susan Bernofsky, who receives the €15,000-Hermann Hesse Prize from Hesse's birthplace of Calw, as trade mag Börsenblatt reports.

The bi-annual award goes alternately to translators of Hesse and literary magazines, and Susan will be given it at a ceremony in July for her translation of Siddharta and for her work as a whole. The judges gave a rather good explanation, saying that her translations:

are characterised by the attempt to remain as close as possible to the original; they maintain the style by re-forming its key structural elements, following the musicality of the original texts, doing without superficial modernisations as well as Manneristic archaisations and thus making the state of the language at the time the originals were written visible, without making access unnecessarily difficult for modern readers.

Quite. Congratulations, Susan!