The Society of Authors has announced the launch of the John Calder Translation Prize, an annual award for translations into English of full-length ambitious, groundbreaking works of literary merit and general interest – and have told downthetubes graphic novels will be considered.
The prize, which opens for submissions in January 2025, will see the winner awarded £3000 and a runner-up awarded £1000 at the Society of Authors’ Translation Prizes ceremony in February 2026.
Submissions can be from any European language into English, and source texts can be from anywhere in the world. Works must be full-length, but can be fiction, non-fiction or poetry. Graphic novels will be considered.
The prize is awarded in honour of the late John Calder (25th January 1927 – 13th August 2018), one of the pre-eminent English-Language publishers of avant-garde literature in the second half of the twentieth century.
He championed fiction in translation, as well as the free word and authors who were suppressed or discriminated against for political or other reasons. He was also the author of several plays, a memoir and various non-fiction titles.
Under Calder’s stewardship, his publishing house brought out novels, plays and poetry by Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget and many others.
He published eighteen Nobel Prize winners and around fifteen hundred books, and put many of the major French and European writers into print, almost single-handedly introducing modern literature into the English language. His commitment to literary excellence influenced two generations of authors, readers, booksellers and publishers.
Works submitted to the John Calder Translation Prize are encouraged to be ambitious in nature, by virtue of style, exploration of themes or complexity of the translation, and distinguished by the highly personal and imaginative approach of the authors to their subject.
“The translator’s lot is not a happy one,” notes author and translator, Richard Stokes, who is a member of the John Calder Translation Prize advisory board. “The highest praise that readers can pay translators is to say that their work does not read like a translation. Translators are not always mentioned on the cover of a book and they are paid a pittance.
“The John Calder Translation Prize will be welcomed by this unsung band of men and women who, through their devotion to foreign prose and poetry, make it available to those of us who are less linguistically gifted.”
The Society of Authors is the UK trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and literary translators, at all stages of their careers. They have more than 12,500 members and have been advising individuals and speaking out for the profession for 140 years. In 2023, we awarded more than £900,000 in prizes and grants (for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and translation), and administer other prizes, including The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year Award and the ALCS Educational Writers’ Award.
Its mission is to empower professional authors and their estates with knowledge, support and community, and to lobby industry and government for an environment that helps sustain and nurture the careers of creators and their work.
This is great news for those working in a very undervalued part of book publishing, complementing the aims of the Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation, established by VIP Brands, in partnership with Comica and the Lakes International Comic Art Festival.
The Sophie Castille Awards for Comics in Translation are for the best translation of comics into local languages, and the English award was won this year by Alexa Frank, translator of “沖合の雷” (Offshore Lightning) by Saito Nazuna.
• The Society of Authors is online at societyofauthors.org
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Books, British Comics, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Other Worlds
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