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 was founded by Lord Weidenfeld and funded by New College, The Queen’s College, and St Anne’s College, Oxford.
Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
Anthony Burgess
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2025
The winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2025 was Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation of Jellyfish Have No Ears (MacLehose) by Adèle Rosenfeld.
As the judges wrote about Jeffrey Zuckermen’s translation:
‘Adèle Rosenfeld’s Jellyfish Have No Ears is a novel at once finely tuned and hazy. We follow the narrator Louise as, faced with worsening hearing loss, she circles round the question of whether or not to get a cochlear implant. In Rosenfeld’s text meaning is called into question, made elusive and slippery. The novel asks how we making meaning out of sound and, especially, the absence of sound. Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation from the French is meticulously and lovingly executed, playful and enriching. In prose that is often poetic, and at other times infused with wry, even acerbic, humour, Rosenfeld and Zuckerman offer compelling and pressing provocations about communication, isolation, community, and what it means to hear.’
Enquiries
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)
2018: Lisa Dillman for her translation of Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba (Portobello Books)
2019: Celia Hawkesworth for her translation of Ivo Andrić, Omer Pasha Latas (New York Review Books)
2020: David Hackston for his translation of Crossing by Pajtim Statovci (Pushkin Press)
2021: Nichola Smalley for her translation of Wretchedness by Andrzej Tichý (And Other Stories)
2022: Nancy Naomi Carlson for her translation of Cargo Hold of Stars by Khal Torabully (Seagull Books)
2023: Monica Cure for her translation of The Censor’s Notebook by Liliana Corobca (Seven Stories Press)
