The American Literary Translators Association has released shortlists for the National Translation Awards in poetry and prose. The winning translators, who receive $4,000 each, will be named October 26 at ALTA's annual conference in in Milwaukee, Wis. This year's shortlisted titles are:
Prose
The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild by Mathias Énard, translated from French by Frank Wynne (New Directions)
Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü, translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely (Transit Books)
The End of August by Yu Miri, translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles
(Riverhead Books)
The Hunger of Women by Marosia Castaldi, translated from Italian by Jamie Richards (And Other Stories)
Not Even the Dead by Juan Gómez Bárcena, translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore (Open Letter Books)
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
(Archipelago Books)
Poetry
And the Street by Pierre Alferi, translated from French by Cole Swensen (Green Linden Press)
Central American Book of the Dead by Balam Rodrigo, translated from Spanish by Dan Bellm (FlowerSong Press)
A Friend's Kitchen by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, translated from Arabic by Bryar Bajalan with the poet Shook (The Poetry Translation Centre)
Ovid's Metamorphoses by Ovid, translated from Latin by C. Luke Soucy
(University of California Press)
Shining Sheep by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated from German by Karen Leeder (Seagull Books)
Winter King by Ostap Slyvynsky, translated from Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova (Lost Horse Press)
"Our judges had the very difficult task of narrowing down this year's submissions to these two shortlists of impressive translations, ranging from the intimate to the epic in scale," said ALTA's v-p Corine Tachtiris. "In a year where AI is dominating the headlines, these translations all attest that AI will never be able to replace the artistry, nuance, and risk that characterizes the work of human translators."
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Six finalists have been selected for the 2024 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, honoring the "most exceptional debut novels" of the year. The winner will be announced October 21. The finalists:
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (Knopf)
Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong (Harper)
Swift River by Essie Chambers (Simon & Schuster)
888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers by Abraham Chang (Flatiron Books)
Piglet by Lottie Hazell (Holt)
Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor (Pantheon)
B&N category manager for fiction Lexie Smyth commented, "One of the best parts of being a bookseller is identifying and elevating debut voices that will go on to become part of the canon. This shortlist of finalists for the Discover Prize is the result of many lively, impassioned conversations among my colleagues, and the six novels selected represent authors who are well on their way to becoming household names. We are so grateful to these authors for their brilliant work and are so proud to put this list forward for our readers."