A new Translation Award has been created between the German and Turkish Governments to help promote literary translations between the two languages.

A new translation award has been created between two governments with the aim to promote literary translations between both countries. German Federal Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey hope that this new award will increase the numbers of literary translations from German to Turkish and Turkish to German.

Although there are many other international translation awards, those awards are usually given by English speaking countries such as the USA and United Kingdom to promote literary translation into the English language. The German-Turkish award is a unique collaboration between the two countries and it will be awarded to its winner for the first time in fall 2010.

The organisers said that the award is given as part of the German Ernst Reuter Initiative for Intercultural Dialogue and Understanding and it will be handed out every year. They hope that the award will help to encourage the contribution made to the cultural and intellectual relations through literary translation and also to recognise more literary translation efforts.

The joint award project involves various organisations such as the Istanbul Goethe Institut, the S. Fischer Stiftung, German Federal Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey and the Robert Bosch Foundation.

For those who are interested in taking part, the award is set out to recognize the top literary works translated from German to Turkish as well as from Turkish to German. The award is dubbed as the Tarabya Translation Prize. The honour will be accompanied by a cash award of 7500 Euros (main prize) that is jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey and the German Federal Foreign Ministry.

Furthermore, the Robert Bosch Foundation is also sponsoring an additional cash prize of 5,000 Euros (the newcomer achievement prize) to the most promising literary translator for that year.

The organisers have said that the inaugural joint award ceremony is due to take place at the historical summer residence of the German ambassador in Tarabya, Istanbul on 3rd of November 2010.

Criteria for submission to the awards

Both the main and newcomer winners will be evaluated for the outstanding semantic and stylistic translation of the source literature. Some further criterions that the judges will look at are the significance of the translation work within the literary context of Turkey and its relevance for intercultural understanding.

The Tarabya Translation Prize will be considered for a wide variety of literary translation works, while the newcomer achievement award will only be given to those who just started their professional career as a literary translator.

Every submission must be accompanied by the translator’s resume, the list of published translations, a compilation of passages of 10-15 pages each in the original language and translations from 2-3 selected works published in the translation.