NEA Announces Literary Translation Fellowships

Posted Aug 4, 2015 | Posted in: Arts Access, Literary Arts, News

With the support of an FY 2016 NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, Maia Evrona will translate Abraham Sutzkever's Poems from My Diary from Yiddish to English. Photo courtesy of Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal — With the support of an FY 2016 NEA Literature Translation Fellowship, Maia Evrona will translate Abraham Sutzkever’s Poems from My Diary from Yiddish to English. Photo courtesy of Jewish Public Library Archives of Montreal.

“What translation can do for us, and what we so desperately need at this juncture in human history, is to radically increase our empathic capacities; to learn, or perhaps relearn, how to listen—to people of all linguistic traditions and hopefully, some day, to beings who don’t ‘speak’ at all.”

Elizabeth Auclair, Public Affairs Specialist, NEA —

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced $275,000 in recommended grants to 20 translators to support the new translation of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry from 11 different languages into English, the latest in the NEA’s efforts to bring the work of writers around the globe to a larger audience.

“The NEA is committed to providing Americans with diverse art experiences,” said NEA Chairman Jane Chu. “Our support of literary translation provides opportunities for readers to expand their knowledge of other cultures and traditions while also experiencing some of the world’s most talented writers.”

Since 1981, the NEA has awarded 410 fellowships to 363 translators, with translations representing 66 languages and 77 countries. This year’s projects are for translation from 11 different languages: Albanian, Chinese, French, German, Danish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Yiddish. The review criteria for these projects consisted not only of the translators’ skill, but also the importance of a particular work of international literature to English-speaking audiences, including those authors and languages which are often underrepresented.

Projects recommended for support include:

A grant of $12,500 to Jeremy Tiang to support the translation from the Chinese of Lo Yi-Chin’s novel Far Away. Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-Chin is a key figure among Chinese speakers but his work has never been translated into English. Yi-Chin offers a unique perspective on the border politics in that part of the world.
A grant of $12,500 to Maia Evrona to support the translation from the Yiddish of Poems from My Diary by Abraham Sutzkever, whom the New York Times has called “one of the great Yiddish poets of his generation.” Considered his masterpiece, Poems from My Diary was awarded the Israel Prize in 1985 – the only time the prize was awarded for a work of literature written in Yiddish rather than Hebrew.
A grant of $25,000 to Matvei Yankelevich to support the translation from the Russian of selected, multi-genre works by Elena Guro. In her short lifetime, Guro (1877-1913) became one of the most influential Russian avant-garde female writers and artists who wrote during what is now called the Russian Silver Age, yet she is practically unknown to English-language readers. This project will collect her prose, diaries, critical notes, and correspondence into a single text.

Click here for more information from the NEA.

Lead in quote: Johanna Warren in the National Endowment for the Art’s 2014 collection of essays, The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation.