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 is supported by New College, The Queen's College, and St Anne's College, Oxford.
Recent winners include: David Hackston for Pajtim Statovci’s Crossing (Pushkin); Celia Hawkesworth for Ivo Andrić’s Omer Pasha Latas (New York Review Books); Lisa Dillman for Andrés Barba’s Such Small Hands (Portobello); Frank Perry for Lina Wolff's Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs (And Other Stories); Philip Roughton for Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s The Heart of Man (MacLehose); Paul Vincent and John Irons for 100 Dutch-Language Poems (Holland Park); Susan Bernofsky for Jenny Erpenbeck's The End of Days (Portobello); Susan Wicks for Valérie Rouzeau’s Talking Vrouz (Arc); Philip Boehm for Herta Müller’s The Hunger Angel (Portobello); Judith Landry for Diego Marani’s New Finnish Grammar (Dedalus)
This year’s judges are Patrick McGuinness, Laura Seymour, Holly Langstaff, and Karolina Watroba (Chair).
The shortlist will be announced in May 2021. The prize of £2000 will be awarded at Oxford Translation Day in June 2021. Ordinarily Oxford Translation Day takes place at St Anne’s College. However, owing to COVID-19 restrictions, it may take place virtually. Oxford Translation Day will feature talks, seminars and workshops, and will give shortlisted translators the opportunity to read from and discuss their work.
How to Enter
The judges will consider the quality of the translation as well as the importance of the original work and the value of its being put into English.
The opening date for entries is 1 December 2020. The closing date for entries is 31 January 2021.
To be eligible, a translation must be a work of fiction, poetry or drama written in any living European language by any author living or dead. It must be a book published for the first time in print form in the United Kingdom in the year 2020. Although the book’s first UK publication must fall in the year 2020, it is still eligible if it was previously published in English elsewhere. Only books published in the UK are eligible. To prove the book complies with this rule it needs to have a UK ISBN, have the price printed in Pounds Sterling and be distributed in the UK.
It may be the work of up to three translators.
Entries should be accompanied by a statement of the date of publication and a contact address and telephone number.
Owing to COVID-19 restrictions, we will NOT be accepting hard copy entries this year. Any hard copy entries will be not considered admissible.
Entries should be sent as PDFs to Dr Eleni Philippou at Comparative.Criticism@st-annes.ox.ac.uk. These PDFs will be kept strictly confidential and will only be circulated to the judges.
