The Award Ceremony of this year's ACF Translation Prize will take place on January 9, 2012. Members of the jury will present the winner with the SWAROVSKI trophy, followed by a reception.
Flashback: ACF TRANSLATION PRIZE 2010 AWARD CEREMONY
The winner of the prestigious ACF Translation Prize of 2010 was renowned American translator David Dollenmayer, who received the award for his translation of Austrian author Michael Köhlmeier’s novella Idyll With Drowning Dog (Idylle mit ertrinkendem Hund), first published in 2008. Köhlmeier is one of the foremost contemporary authors writing in German. Only some of his works have been translated into English.
ACFNY Deputy Director Martin Rauchbauer moderated the event, and delivered remarks on behalf of the Austrian Cultural Forum. The Forum's director Andreas Stadler and renowned Austrian literary critic Daniela Strigl presented the award to David Dollenmayer. Also on hand was Joshua Mandelbaum of Words Without Borders who gave a brief speech.
David Dollenmayer is a translator of the works of contemporary German authors and a professor of German whose primary research interests are 18th, 19th, and 20th century German literature and culture. Dollenmayer earned his B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University, and began teaching at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1988. He has translated works as varied as Dearest Georg by Elias Canetti (2010), Crossing the Hudson by Peter Stephan Jungk (2009), and House of Childhood by Anna Mitgutsch (2006).
Author Michael Köhlmeier was delighted to hear of the award, and sent congratulatory words: "How can anyone master a language in the span of a single life? And all the greater is my admiration for the translators who succeed in shining the light of another language onto this treasure. I bow before them in respect and gratitude". Daniela Strigl was equally euphoric in her laudatio: "David Dollenmayer’s sensitive and subtle translation of a gripping story in gripping language can help the US readership to discover an outstanding novelist… We only can hope that David Dollenmayer has acquired a taste for Michael Köhlmeiers Oeuvre".
Finally, David Dollenmayer read a passage from his translation, and discussed aspects of his work with Professor Fatima Naqvi. The event concluded with a reception in honor of David Dollenmayer.
Photographs from the event are available in transforum magazine.
Flashback: ACF TRANSLATION PRIZE 2009: Award Ceremony
by Simona Sivkoff
On December 1st 2009, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York inaugurated the ACF Translation Prize, an award supporting the translations of contemporary Austrian literature into English. The event honoring the three winners Jean M. Snook, Uljana Wolf, and Christian Hawkey incorporated two aspects of literature in translation: the people promoting and working with it and, more intimately, the translators themselves. ACFNY Deputy Director Martin Rauchbauer introduced the award, and conveyed the Forum’s aspiration that the award support and facilitate intercultural exchange through literature in translation. Rauchbauer gratefully acknowledged the volume and quality of submissions, and thanked all participants in the competition for making the work of the jury both exciting and challenging. Having talked about the importance of bringing Austrian literature and culture to the American public in its native tongue, Rauchbauer turned the podium over to the Festival Director of World Voices PEN, Caro Llewellyn. She spoke about the significance of supporting the translation of national literatures, saying that it contributed to a global cultural exchange and critical international dialogue.
Michael Orthofer, of The Literary Saloon, delivered a laudation for poets Uljana Wolf and Christian Hawkey, who collected and translated the works of distinguished author Ilse Aichinger in an anthology of short prose pieces titled Bad Words and published by Fischer Verlag. Bad Words includes a large selection of Aichinger’s texts from the sixties onwards that have not appeared in English before. The concluding laudation was held by Fatima Naqvi, a professor of German and Austrian Literature at Rutgers University. She spoke of the literary and linguistic intricacy of Gert Jonke’s work and praised Jean M. Snook’s outstanding translation of his novel The Distant Sound for conveying this intricacy in English.
The winners participated in a discussion with Daniela Strigl, a literary critic and professor of German, at the University of Vienna. The translators talked about their motivation for getting involved with the literary world of Austria and their experience translating such challenging authors as Aichinger and Jonke. The discussion was followed by a reading, for which each winner had prepared a short excerpt of their work. The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the award by Caro Llewellyn and the presentation of crystalline trophies, a gift from Swarovski, to each winner. The evening ended with a reception at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.
