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Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It is founded by Lord Weidenfeld and funded by New College, The Queen’s College and St Anne’s College, Oxford.
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2018

This year’s shortlist included eight books from an outstanding entry of 112 titles in translations from 24 different languages.

Once again we had impressive submissions from both larger and smaller publishing houses. The shortlist contains translations from six languages.

The winner was announced at the prizegiving and dinner at St Anne’s College, Oxford on Saturday 9 June 2018. This was the crowning event of Oxford Translation Day, which boasted a varied programme of talks, workshops and readings. Details are available at: http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/oxford-translation-day-2018.

This year’s judges of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize were the academics Kasia Szymanska, Simon Park, Jessica Stacey, and Adriana X Jacobs (Chair).

The winner of the 2018 shortlist is Lisa Dillman for Andrés Barba’s Such Small Hands (Portobello Books).

The 2018 shortlist:

Dorthe Nors, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra (Pushkin Press)

Yoko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (Portobello Books)

Pablo Neruda, Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander (Bloodaxe Books)

Émile Zola, A Love Story, translated from the French by Helen Constantine (Oxford University Press)

Louis Guilloux, Blood Dark, translated from the French by Laura Marris (New York Review Books)

Andrés Barba, Such Small Hands, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (Portobello Books)

Édouard Louis, The End of Eddy, translated from the French by Michael Lucey (Harvill Secker)

Daša Drndić, Belladonna, translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth (MacLehose Press)

Enquiries about the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize should be directed to the Prize administrator, Dr Eleni Philippou, at Comparative.Criticism@st-annes.ox.ac.uk.

Previous winners

1999: Jonathan Galassi for his translation of Eugenio Montale's Collected Poems (Carcanet)
2000: Margaret Jull Costa for her translation of José Saramago's All the Names (Harvill)
2001: Edwin Morgan for his translation of Phèdre by Jean Racine (Carcanet) into Scots
2002: Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-Jelen for Miklós Bánffy's They Were Divided (Arcadia)
2003: Ciaran Carson for his translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno (Granta)
2004: Michael Hofmann for his translation of Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel (Penguin)
2005: Denis Jackson for his translation of Theodor Storm's Paul the Puppeteer (Angel Books)
2006: Len Rix for his translation of Magda Szabó's The Door (Harvill Secker)
2007: Michael Hofmann for his translation of Durs Grünbein's Ashes for Breakfast: Selected Poems (Faber)
2008: Margaret Jull Costa for her translation of Eça de Queiroz's The Maias (Dedalus)
2009: Anthea Bell for her translation of Saša Stanišić's How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
2010: Jamie McKendrick for his translation of Valerio Magrelli's The Embrace: Selected Poems (Faber and Faber)
2011: Margaret Jull Costa for her translation of José Saramago's The Elephant's Journey (Harvill Secker)
2012: Judith Landry for her translation of Diego Marani's New Finnish Grammar
2013: Philip Boehm for his translation of Herta Müller's The Hunger Angel (Portobello)
2014: Susan Wicks for her translation of Valérie Rouzeau's Talking Vrouz
2015: Susan Bernofsky for her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days
2016: Joint Winners: Paul Vincent and John Irons for their translation of 100 Dutch-Language Poems (Holland Park Press) & Philip Roughton for his translation of Jón Kalman Stefánsson's The Heart of Man (MacLehose Press)
2017: Frank Perry for his translation of Lina Wolff's Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs (And Other Stories)

‘Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.’ (Milan Kundera)

‘Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.’ (Anthony Burgess)
Judges' citations (2018)Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize - How to enter About the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize