Austrian Translation Prize

I believe this was announced a few weeks back, but yesterday I received some information about the newly launched Austrian Translation Prize:

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is pleased to announce the Austrian Cultural Forum Translation Prize, aimed at the promotion of intercultural exchange between the Republic of Austria and the United States. This initiative will support translators of contemporary Austrian Literature into English with a grant of €3000.

Applications are evaluated by a transatlantic advisory board, comprised of Andreas Stadler (Director, ACFNY), Martin Rauchbauer (Deputy Director, ACFNY), Riky Stock (German Book Office, New York), Fatima Naqvi (Rutgers University), Michael Orthofer (The Literary Saloon), and Daniela Strigl (University of Vienna).

And in terms of logistics, a pdf version of the application form can be found by clicking here.

Although it’s not a huge number, I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at our translation database and found that seven Austrian works made their way into the U.S. last year. (Of course, three of these are from Ariadne Books, which only publishes Austrian literature.) For 2009, we’ve already identified four titles . . . That said, hopefully this special prize will encourage some other publishers to pick up a few Austrian books.

(Since we only track new and original translations, the three Jakov Lind titles being reprinted this year — Landscape in Concrete, Ergo, and Soul of Wood — aren’t included in these numbers. Lind was one of Austria’s greatest — and strangest! — writers, and we’ll have a lot more info about him in the near future.)