The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) invites publishers and translators to nominate book-length translations into English of Asian poetry or source texts from (but not commentaries on) Zen Buddhism. Languages eligible are Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The winning translator will be announced in the fall of each year and receive a $5,000 award.
The Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, which was inaugurated in 2009, recognizes the importance of Asian translation for international literature and promotes the translation of Asian works into English. Stryk is an internationally acclaimed translator of Japanese and Chinese Zen poetry, renowned Zen poet himself, and former professor of English at Northern Illinois University.
To be eligible for the prize in a given year, works must have been published in the previous calendar year. Submissions will be judged according to the literary significance of the original and the success of the translation in recreating the literary artistry of the original. While the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize is primarily intended to recognize the translation of contemporary works, retranslations or first-time translations of important older works will also be seriously considered. Publishers or translators should send with each entry a letter of nomination and three copies of the translated work to:
American Literary Translators Association
Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize
c/o The University of Texas at Dallas
School of Arts & Humanities JO51
800 West Campbell Road
Richardson, TX 75080-3021The deadline for submissions is May 15 every year for works published in the previous calendar year.
For books chosen by the jury as finalists, publishers will be asked to provide the original-language text; any finalist for which no original-language text is provided will be excluded from further consideration.
To learn more about Lucien Stryk visit Poetry Poetry.
For more information, please contact Maria Suarez at maria.suarez@utdallas.edu.